THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


STUDENT'S  EDITION— TWO  VOLUMES  IN  ONE 


ALHISTORY 

or 

AMERICAN  LITERATURE 

DURING  THE  COLONIAL  PERIOD 
1607-1765 


BY 

MOSES  COIT  TYLER 

or  AMERICAN  HISTORY  AND  LITERATURE  m  CORNELL 
UNIVERSITY 


G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS 
NEW  YORK  AND  LONDON 

Cbe  •Knickerbocker  press 


COPYRIGHT,  1878 
O.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS 


tEbc  ftnicbetbocher  prees,  ttew  iporb 


PS 


W.I-2L, 


TO 
SAMUEL    COIT,    OF    HARTFORD, 

AMD 

GEORGE      COIT,      OF      NORWICH, 

MY  KINSMEN  AND  BENEFACTORS, 

I    DEDICATE 

IT  hi*  Work 

IN  TOKEN  OP  UNCEASING  GRATITUDE. 


PREFACE. 


IN  the  two  volumes  here  devoted  to  the  History  of 
American  Literature  prior  to  the  American  Revolution,  I 

-'  have  not  undertaken  to  give  either  a  dictionary  of  all  Colo- 

^  nial  Americans  who  ever  wrote  anything,  or  a  bibliographi- 
cal list  of  all  American  writings  that  have  survived  to  us 

J:  from  the  Colonial  Time.  It  is  our  early  literary  history  that 
I  here  endeavor  to  set  forth ; — that  is,  the\history  of  those 
writings  produced  by  Americans  during  the  period  of  our 
undisturbed  subordination  to  England,  which  have  some 
noteworthy  value  as  literature,  and  some  real  significance 

^7  in   the  literary   unfolding   of  the   American    mind.     But 
^  .within  the  barriers  fixed  by  the  nature  of  this  scheme,  my 

"**  work  does  aspire  to  be  exhaustive.  I  have  tried  to^xamine 
the  entire  mass  of  American  writings,  during  the  Colonial 
^  Time,  so  far  as  they  now  exist  in  the  public  and  private 
libraries  of  this  country ;  and  in  the  exercise  of  a  most 
anxious  judgment,  and  of  a  desire  for  completeness  that 
•*  has  not  grown  weary  even  under  physical  fatigue,  I  have 
aimed  in  these  volumes  to  make  an  appropriate  mention 
of  every  one  of  our  early  authors  whose  writings,  whether 
many  or  few,  have  any  appreciable  literary  merit,  or  throw 
any  helpful  light  upon  the  evolution  of  thought  and  of 
style  in  America,  during  those  flourishing  and  indispensa- 
ble days. 

In  the  composition  of  a  work  of  this  kind,  it  is  a  very 


vi  PREFACE. 

grave  judicial  responsibility  that  the  author  is  forced  to 
assume ;  it  is  also  a  very  sacred  responsibility.  With  ref- 
erence to  every  name  presented  to  him,  there  arises  the 
debate,  first,  over  its  admission  into  the  history  at  all; 
and,  secondly,  if  admitted,  over  the  amount  of  promi- 
nence to  be  given  to  it.  Upon  these  two  questions, 
scarcely  any  two  persons  can  ever  exactly  agree.  As  to 
my  own  solution  of  these  questions,  I  can  only  say  that  I 
have  studied,  as  I  believe,  every  American  writer  of  the 
Colonial  Time,  in  his  extant  writings  ;  I  have  included  him 
within  this  history  or  have  excluded  him  from  it,  after 
fair  inspection  of  his  claims;  and  I  have  given  to  every 
writer  whom  I  have  admitted,  just  so  much  room  as  was 
demanded  by  my  own  sense  of  his  relative  literary  im- 
portance, and  by  my  own  view  of  the  necessary  adjust- 
ment of  historical  proportions  in  this  book.  Upon  no 
topic  of  literary  estimation  have  I  formed  an  opinion  at 
second  hand.  In  every  instance,  I  have  examined  for  my- 
self the  work  under  consideration.  Wherever,  upon  any 
subject,  I  have  consciously  used  the  opinion  of  another,  I 
have  made  specific  acknowledgment  of  my  indebtedness ; 
and  by  constant  reference  in  the  footnotes  to  the  sources 
of  my  information,  I  have  tried  to  help  others  in  testing 
my  own  statements,  and  in  prosecuting  similar  studies 
for  themselves.  Having,  after  the  utmost  painstaking, 
reached  my  own  conclusions,  I  have  endeavored  to  utter 
them  frankly,  accepting  the  responsibility  of  them  ;  and 
yet,  so  various  are  human  judgments  that  I  may  not  dare 
to  hope  that  any  other  student  of  the  subject  will  in  all 
particulars  agree  with  me. 

Some  difference  of  opinion,  also,  is  likely  to  exist  over 
the  question  of  weaving  into  the  text  of  a  history  of  lit- 


PREFACE.  Vil 

crature,  passages  from  the  authors  who  are  described  in 
it.  First  of  all,  let  it  be  mentioned  that  to  do  this  skil- 
fully is  by  no  means  a  saving  of  labor  for  the  literary  his- 
torian: indeed,  after  the  great  matters  of  construction 
have  been  settled,  no  part  of  his  task  is  more  difficult 
than  this ;  none  requires  a  daintier  touch,  a  more  sensitive 
judgment,  or  a  literary  sense  more  delicate  and  alert.  It 
would  be  far  easier  to  write  a  history  of  literature  with- 
out illustrative  quotations  than  with  them.  But  in  the 
service  of  his  art,  the  true  literary  man  can  never  think 
of  his  own  ease  as  an  offset  to  the  pleasure  of  doing  his 
work  well ;  and  for  one,  I  do  not  see  how  a  history  of  lit- 
erature can  be  well  done,  or  be  of  much  use,  without  the 
frequent  verification  and  illustration  of  its  statements  by 
expertly  chosen  examples  from  the  authors  under  study. 
Unless  such  examples  arc  given,  the  most  precise,  clear, 
and  even  vivid  delineations  of  literary  characteristics  must, 
for  those  who  have  not  read  the  authors  spoken  of,  fade 
away  into  pallor  and  vagueness,  and  after  a  time  be- 
come wearisome ;  while  the  whole  work,  as  a  presentation 
of  literature,  will  seem,  as  Motley  once  wittily  said  to 
George  Ticknor,  "  a  kind  of  Barmecide's  feast,  in  which 
the  reader  has  to  play  the  part  of  Shacabac,  and  believe 
in  the  excellence  of  the  lamb  stuffed  with  pistachio  nuts, 
the  flavor  of  the  wines,  and  the  perfume  of  the  roses, 
upon  the  assertion  of  the  entertainer,  and  without  assist- 
ance from  his  own  perceptions."1  On  the  general  theory, 
therefore,  which  I  hold  of  this  department  of  the  his- 
torical art,  I  should  certainly  have  introduced  into  my 
history  specimens  of  the  literature  concerning  which  I 

>  -  Life.  Letten,  and  Journals  of  George  Ticknor,"  II.  157. 


viii  PREFACE. 

write ;  but  there  is  an  additional  reason  why  I  ought  to 
do  so  in  the  present  case.  The  literature  of  which  I  have 
here  given  an  account,  is  a  neglected  literature,  and  prob- 
ably must  always  remain  neglected :  the  most  of  the 
books  of  which  it  is  composed  have  not  been  read  and 
cannot  be  read  by  many  people  now  living;  since  those 
books  exist  in  but  few  copies,  and  lurk  as  rare  and  costly 
literary  treasures  in  a  small  number  of  libraries.  To  give 
only  abstract  descriptions  of  such  a  literature,  and  to 
assume  that  my  readers  can  verify  my  statements,  by 
their  own  recollections  of  it,  or  by  immediate  and  easy 
references  to  it,  would  be  mere  trifling.  The  only  course 
left  to  me,  if  I  would  render  my  labors  of  any  real  benefit 
to  those  for  whom  I  write,  is  to  give  freely,  and  with  as 
much  discrimination  as  I  possess,  such  portions  of  our 
early  literature  as  may  form  a  sort  of  terse  anthology  of 
it,  and  as  may  enable  my  own  readers  to  feel  for  them- 
selves something  of  what  I  have  felt  in  my  direct  and 
prolonged  researches  in  it. 

It  is  my  duty,  likewise,  to  state  here  just  what  method 
I  have  adopted  in  the  reproduction  of  the  literary  speci- 
mens that  are  given  in  this  book.  Obviously,  their  value 
for  the  purpose  now  in  view  would  be  destroyed,  if  they 
should  be  tampered  with  ;  if  the  historian  of  this  body  of 
literature  should  undertake  to  improve  it  by  his  own 
emendations  of  it, — correcting  its  syntax,  chastising  its 
vocabulary,  or  recomposing  the  structure  of  its  sentences. 
This  I  have  never  knowingly  done.  I  have  tried  to  re- 
produce my  illustrative  passages  precisely  as  they  stand 
in  the  original  texts,  excepting  in  three  particulars  relat- 
ing to  mere  mechanical  form.  The  seventeenth  century 
and  the  first  half  of  the  eighteenth,  were  times  of  extreme 


PKEFACE.  IX 

inaccuracy  in  proof-reading,  and  of  extreme  confusion  in 
punctuation  and  spelling ;  and  I  have  thought  it  no  vio- 
lation of  the  integrity  of  quotation  for  me  to  spell  and 
punctuate  any  sentence  of  those  times  according  to  pres- 
ent usage,  and  occasionally  to  correct  a  palpable  error  of 
the  press.  It  will  be  understood,  also,  that  whenever,  in 
citing  a  passage,  long  or  short,  the  purpose  of  my  cita- 
tion would  be  satisfied  by  giving  only  a  fragment  of  it,  I 
have  given  only  the  fragment;  and  that  in  such  cases  I 
have  indicated,  in  the  usual  manner,  the  presence  of  an 
ellipsis. 

In  the  eighteen  years  and  more  that  have  passed  since 
the  first  publication  of  this  work,  I  have  been  constantly 
on  the  watch  for  errors  in  its  text,  and  in  my  own  efforts 
to  improve  its  accuracy,  I  have  been  aided  by  criticisms 
from  many  quarters,  both  public  and  private.  For  such 
kindness  I  owe  an  expression  of  thanks  particularly  to 
John  A.  Doyle,  Fellow  of  All  Souls  College,  Oxford ;  to 
Justin  Winsor,  of  the  library  of  Harvard  University; 
to  Samuel  Abbot  Green,  of  the  library  of  the  Massachu- 
setts Historical  Society;  and  to  two  friends  who  are  no 
longer  within  the  reach  of  my  thanks,  Robert  C.  Winthrop 
and  Henry  Martyn  Dexter.  No  criticism,  whether  valid 
or  otherwise,  which  has  come  under  my  eye,  has  been  dis- 
regarded ;  and  the  work,  as  now  offered  to  the  public,  is 
as  free  from  errors  of  detail  as  I  am  at  present  able  to 
make  it. 

M.  C.  T. 

CORNELL  UNIVERSITY,  ai  January.  1897. 


CONTENTS. 


FIRST   COLONIAL    PERIOD:    16O7-1673. 


CHAPTER  I. 
THE     BEGINNING. 

L— The  Procession  of  the  fint  English-speaking  colonies  from  the  old 
world  to  the  new— Our  first  literary  period  that  of  the  planting  of 
the  American  nation — Oar  first  American  writers  immigrant  Amer- 
leans — True  Fathers  of  American  Literature — The  literary  traits 
they  brought  with  them S 

n. — Why  those  fint  Americans  wrote  books— True  classification  of  early 
American  writing* — Tidings  sent  back— Controversial  appeals — 
Defences  against  calumny — Descriptions  of  the  new  lands-— And 
of  the  new  life  there — Books  of  religion — Poetry — Histories — 
Miscellaneous  prose J 

III.— Birth  year  of  American  literature— State  of  English  literature 
when  American  literature  was  born— Interest  of  Englishmen 
then  in  their  barbaric  American  empire— Departure  from  Eng- 
land  of  the  first  English  Americans— Michael  Drayton's  farewell 
ode  to  them ^^. II 

I 

CHAPTER  IL 

VIRGINIA  :   THE   FIRST    WRITER. 

I.— The  arrival  in  America  of  the  first  Americans — A  fortunate  blan- 
der— Satisfaction  with  their  new  home 16 

II. — The  son  of  men  they  were — Their  leaden — Captain  John  Smith — 
His  previous  career — His  character — His  important  relation  to 
early  American  settlements — The  fint  writer  in  American  lit- 
erature   17 

HI.— His  first  book— Its  publication  in  London  in  1608— A  literary 
synchronism— American  literature  and  John  Milton — Synopsis  of 
the  book— Notable  passages— The  fable  of  his  rescue  by  Poca- 
hontas — The  place  of  the  book  at  the  head  of  American  litera- 
ture— Summary  of  its  literary  traits ao 

XI 


Xjj  CONTENTS. 

IV.— His  second  American  writing— A  bold  letter  to  his  London  patrons 
—His  knowledge  refusing  to  be  commanded  by  their  ignorance— 
The  kind  of  men  to  make  good  colonists  of— Early  symptoms  of 
American  recalcitrance 27 

V.— His  third  American  work— Vivid  pictures  of  Virginia— The  climate 
— The  country — The  productions — The  Indians — His  fine  state- 
ment of  the  utility  of  the  Virginian  enterprise 30 

VI.— Captain  John  Smith's  return  to  England— His  subsequent  career— 
A  baffled  explorer— His  pride  in  the  American  colonies— Utilized 
by  the  playwrights— Thomas  Fuller's  sarcastic  account  of  him — 
His  champions — Final  estimate 35 


CHAPTER  III. 

VIRGINIA  :    OTHER   EARLY    WRITERS. 

I. — George  Percy  of  Northumberland — His  worthiness  —  His  graphic 

sketches  of  the  brightness  and  gloom  of  their  first  year  in  America.  39 

II. — Vi^liam  Strachey — His  terrible  voyage  and  wreck  with  Sir  Thomas 
Gates — His  book  descriptive  of  it  and  of  the  state  of  the  colony 
in  Virginia — Some  germs  of  Shakespeare's  Tempest — Strachey's 
wonderful  picture  of  a  storm  at  sea 41 

HI. — Alexander  Whitaker,  the  devoted  Christian  missionary — His  life 
and  death  and  memory  in  Virginia — His  appeal  to  England  in 
"  Good  News  from  Virginia  " 45 

IV. — John  Pory — His  coming  to  Virginia — His  previous  career — A  cos- 
mopolite in  a  colony — His  return  to  England — His  amusing 
sketches  of  Indian  character — The  humors  and  consolations  of 
pioneer  life  along  the  James  River 48 

V. — George  Sandys — His  high  personal  qualities  and  his  fine  genius — 
His  literary  services  before  coming  to  America — Michael  Drayton's 
exhortation  to  entice  the  Muses  to  Virginia — Sandys's  fidelity  to 
his  literary  vocation  amid  calamity  and  fatigue — His  translation 
of  Ovid — Its  relation  to  poetry  and  scholarship  in  the  new  world 
—Passages  from  it— The  story  of  Philomela— His  poetic  renown.  51 

CHAPTER  IV. 

VIRGINIA  :   ITS  LITERATURE   DURING    THE    REMAINDER    OF    TOT 
FIRST    PERIOD. 

I.— The  establishment  of  Maryland  upon  the  territory  of  Virginia — 
Maryland's  slight  literary  record  for  this  period  blended  with  that 
of  Virginia— Father  Andrew  White  and  his  Latin  narrative— John 


CONTENTS.  Xiii 

Hammond,  the  Anglo-American.  Undying  the  social  problems  of 
England — Hi*  solution  of  them  in  the  word  America — His  book, 
"Leah  and  Rachel, **  and  its  original  American  flavor 60 

IL— George  Alsop— His  life  in  Maryland— His  droll  book  about  Mary 
land— Comic  descriptions  of  the  effects  of  his  voyage — Vivid  ac- 
counts of  the  country,  of  its  productions.  65 

IIL— Sketch  of  Bacon's  rebellion  in  1676— The  heroic  and  capable  quali- 
ties of  Bacon— The  anonymous  manuscripts  relating  to  the  re- 
bellion—Uterary  indications  furnished  by  these  writings — Descrip- 
tions of  a  beleaguered  Indian  fort — Of  Bacon's  conflicts  with 
Berkeley — Of  Bacon's  military  ktratagem — Bacon's  death — Noble 
poem  upon  his  death 6g 

IV. — Review  of  the  literary  record  of  Virginia  during  this  period— Its 
comparative  barrenness — Explanation  found  in  the  personal  traits 
of  the  founders  of^  Virginia— And  in  their  peculiar  social  organiza- 
tion— Resulting  in  inferior  public  prosperity — Especially  in  lack  of 
school*  and  of  intellectual  stimulus — Sir  William  Berkeley's  bane- 
ful influence — Printing  prohibited  in  Virginia  by  the  English 
government  —  Religious  freedom  prohibited  by  the  people  of  Vir- 
cinia-^  Literary  development  impossible  under  such  conditions* .  •  8o(-4 


CHAPTER  V. 

NEW    ENGLAND   TRAITS   IN    THE   SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY. 

I. — Transition  from  Virginia  to  New  England — The  race-qualities  of  the 
first  New-Englanden — The  period  of  their  coming— Their  num. 
ben,  and  the  multitude  of  their  posterity 93 

II. — Two  classes  of  Englishmen  in  the  seventeenth  century  ;  those  rest- 
ing upon  the  world's  attainments,  those  demanding  a  new  de- 
parture— From  the  second  class  came  the  New-Englanden — The 
purpose  of  their  coming  an  ideal  one 96 

III. —Their  intellectuality— The  large  number  of  their  learned  men — 

Their  esteem  for  learning 98 

IV.— Their  earnestness  of  character—Religion  the  master-thought— Their 
conceptions  of  providence  and  of  prayer — Their  religious  intensity 
leading  to  moroseness,  to  spiritual  pedantry,  to  a  jurisprudence 
based  on  theology,  and  to  persecution KM 

V.— The  outward  forms  of  New  England  life — Its  prosperity — Literature 
in  early  New  England — A  literary  class  from  the  first — Circum- 
stances favorable  to  literary  action — The  limits  of  their  literary 
studies — Restraints  upon  the  liberty  of  printing— Other  disadvan- 
tages— The  quality  in  them  which  gave  assurance  of  literary  de- 
velopment   109 


XIV 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER  VI. 


NEW   ENGLAND  :    HISTORICAL   WRITERS. 

I. — Early  development  of  the  historic  consciousness  in  New  England. ..      115 

II. — William  Bradford — His  career  in  England,  Holland, and  America — 
His  History  of  Plymouth — Singular  fate  of  the  manuscript — His 
fitness  for  historical  writing—  Outline  of  the  work — Condition  and 
feelings  of  the  Pilgrims  when  first  ashore  at  Plymouth — Portrait 
of  a  clerical  mountebank — The  skins  needed  by  the  founders  of 
colonies — Unfamiliar  personal  aspects  of  the  Pilgrims — Their  pre- 
dominant nobility — Summary  of  this  historian's  traits 116 

III. — Nathaniel  Morton — His  life — His  "  Memorial,"  and  how  he  made 

it — Lack  of  originality  in  it  and  in  him 126 

TV. — The  sailing  of  the  Winthrop  fleet — John  Winthrop  himself — His 
"  Model  of  Christian  Charity" — His  "  History  of  New  England" 
— An  historical  diary — Its  minute  fidelity  and  graphic  power — 
Examples — His  famous  speech 128 

V. — Edward  Johnson — His  "  Wonder-Working  Providence ''  —  How  he 
came  to  write  it — Reflects  the  greatness  and  pettiness  of  the  New 
England  Puritans — Examples — Its  literary  peculiarities 137 

VI. — The  literature  of  the  Pequot  \Var — John  Mason  its  hero  and  his- 
torian— His  book — His  story  of  the  Mystic  fight 146 

VII. — The  high  worth  of  Daniel  Gookin — An  American  sage,  patriot, 
and  philanthropist — The  trials  and  triumphs  of  his  life — His  two 
historical  works  relating  to  the  Indians 151 

CHAPTER  VII. 

NEW  ENGLAND:   DESCRIPTIONS  OF  NATURE  AND  PEOPLE   IN 
AMERICA. 

I. — Sensitiveness  of  the  first  Americans  to  the  peculiar  phenomena  of  the 


new  world. 


II- — "Journal"  of  Bradford  and  Winslow — First  contact  of  the  Pilgrims 
with  America — Gropings — American  thunder — Indian  visits— An 
Indian  king  at  home— Winslow's  letter— His  "Good  News  from 
New  England  "—History  as  cultivated  by  the  Indians— Men  who 
are  not  called  to  be  colonists 

Ill-— Francis  Higginson,  churchman,  dissenter,  immigrant— His  "  True 
Relation  "-His  "New  England's  Plantation  "—Pictures  of  sea 
and  land— The  bright  side  of  things  in  America 

IV._William  Wood_His  «  New  England's  Prospect  "-His  uncommon 
literary  ability— Analysis  of  his  book— His  defence  of  the  honesty 
of  travellers— His  powers  of  description— Merit  of  his  verses— 
Mirthfulness— Wolves,  humming-birds,  fishes— Eloquent  and  play- 
ful sketches  of  Indians  .. 


158 


CONTENTS.  XV 

V.— John  Josaelyn— His  kindred— No  lover  of  the  New  Eagland  Pun- 
tans — His  habits  in  America— A  seventeenth  century  naturalist  in 
ear  woods— His  "New  England's  Rarities  Discovered  "—His 
" Two  Voyage*  to  New  England" — The  White  Hills— His  true 
value  as  a  reporter  of  natural  history — Generous  gifts  to  the  cred- 

reader—  His  friendly  attitude  toward  the  unknown lit 


CHAPTER  VIII. 
NEW  ENGLAND:   THEOLOGICAL  AND  RELIGIOUS  WRITERS. 

L— The  supremacy  of  the  clergy  in  early  New  England— Their  wort  hi- 
ness  Their  public  manifestations— How  they  studied  and  preached 
—The  quality  and  vastness  of  the  work  they  did 186 

II. — Thomas  Hooker  one  of  the  three  greatest— His  career  in  England — 
Comes  to  Massachusetts — Founds  Hartford— A  prolific  writer — 
His  commanding  traits  as  a  man  and  an  orator— His  published 
writing* — Literary  characteristics — His  frankness  in  damnatory 
preaching — Total  depravity— Formalism — Need  of  Christ — The 
versatility  and  pathos  of  his  appeals 193 

III.— New  England's  debt  to  Archbishop  Laud— Thomas  Shepard's 
animated  interview  with  him.  and  its  consequences— Shepani's 
settlement  in  America— Personal  peculiarities— Illustrations  of 
his  theology  and  method  of  discourse So* 

IV.— John  Cotton— His  brave  sermon  in  St.  Mary's  Church.  Cambridge 
— Becomes  rector  of  St.  Botolph's,  Boston— His  great  fame  in 
England— His  ascendency  in  New  England— Correspondence 
with  Cromwell— His  death  announced  by  a  comet— As  a  student 
and  writer no 

V. — A  group  of  minor  prophets— Peter  BulUey  founder  of  Concord— The 
man— His  "Gospel  Covenant  "—John  Norton — Succeeds  John 
Cotton-His  style  as  a  writer— William  Hooke— His  life— His 
"New  England's  Tears  for  Old  England's  Fear* "—  Charles 
Chauncey's  career  in  England  and  America — Becomes  president 
of  Harvard— Great  usefulness  as  an  educator— His  scholarship. 
Industry,  old  age— His  "  Plain  Doctrine  of  Justification"— His 
unpublished  writings  made  useful Sit 

CHAPTER  IX. 

NEW   ENGLAND      MISCELLANEOUS   PROSE   WRITERS. 

L— Nathaniel  Ward  and  his  cnlVsions  with  Land — His  position  in  early 
American    literature  —  Hit  large   experience   before   coming  to 
r     Americs— A  reminiscence  ok.  Prince  Rupert **7 


xvj  CONTENTS. 

II.— Career  of  Nathaniel  Ward  in  New  England— His  "  Simple  Cobbler 
of  Agawam  " — Summary  of  the  book — The  author's  mental  traits 
— His  attitude  toward  his  age — Vindicates  New  England  from  the 
calumny  that  it  tolerates  variety  of  opinions — His  satire  upon 
fashionable  dames  in  the  colony  and  upon  long-haired  men — His 
discussion  of  the  troubles  in  England — Literary  traits  of  the  book.  229 

III.— Roger  Williams  as  revealed  in  his  own  writings — His  exceptional 
attractiveness  as  an  early  New-Englander — What  he  stood  for  in 
his  time  in  New  England — A  troublesome  personage  to  his  con- 
temporaries and  why — His  special  sympathy  with  Indians  and 
with  all  other  nnfortnnate  folk 241 

IV. — First  visit  of  Roger  Williams  to  England — His  first  hook — His 
interest  in  the  great  struggle  in  England — Hi>  reply  to  John  Cot- 
ton's justification  of  his  banishment  from  Massachusetts — His  book 
against  a  national  church — His  "  Bloody  Tenet  of  Persecution  " — 
John  Cotton's  reply — Williams's  powerful  rejoinder — Other  writ- 
ings— His  letters — Personal  traits  shown  in  them — His  famous 
letter  against  lawlessness  and  tyranny 246 


CHAPTER   X. 

NEW   ENGLAND  :     THE    VERSE-WRITERS. 

I.— The  attitude  of  Puritanism  toward  Art— Especially  toward  Poetry — 

The  unextinguished  poetry  in  Puritanism 264 

II.— The  Puritans  of  New  England  universally  addicted  to  versification 
—The  mirth  of  their  elegies  and  epitaphs— The  poetical  expert- 
ness  of  Pastor  John  Wilson 266 

III.— The  pleasant  legend  of  William  Morrell— His  poem  in  Latin  and 

English  on  New  England 371 

IV.— The  prodigy  of  the  Bay  Psalm  Book— Its  Reverend  fabricators— 
Their  conscientious  mode  of  proceeding— A  book  fearfully  and 
wonderfully  made . .  a^ 

V — Anne  Bradstreet  the  earliest  professional  poet  of  New  England- 
First  appearance  of  her  book— Her  career— Her  prose  writings— 
Her  training  for  poetry— Her  guides  and  masters  the  later  euphu- 
ists  in  English  verse— List  of  her  poetical  works— Analysis  of 
"The  Four  Elements  "—"The  Four  Monarchies  "—The  funda- 
mental error  in  her  poetry— Her  «  Contemplations  "—The  first 
poet  of  the  Merrimac— Her  devout  poems— Her  allusions  to  con- 
temporary politics -— Her  championship  c4  women— Final  eiti- 

377 


FIRST    COLONIAL    PERIOD. 

16O7-l6?a 


ui   • 


2  - 

flC  o 

U  u 

<  « 


Writers  of  Narration 
and  Description,  in- 
cluding American 
Apologetics. 


Historical  Writers/ 


Theological  and  Re- 
ligious Writers. 


CAPTAIN  JOHN  SMITH. 
GEORGE  PERCY.  • 
WILLIAM  STRACHEY. 
ALEXANDER  WHJTAKJUL 
JOHN  PORY. 
EDWARD  WINSLOW. 
FRANCIS  HIGGINSON. 
WILLIAM  WOOD. 
JOHN  HAMMOND. 
JOHN  JOSSELYN. 
GEORGE  ALSOF. 

WILLIAM  BRADFORD. 
JOHN  WINTHROF. 
NATHANIEL  MORTON. 
JOHN  MASON. 
EDWARD  JOHNSON. 
DANIEL  GOOKIN. 
AUTHOR  OF  But  WELL  PA 


THOMAS  HOOKER. 
THOMAS  SHEFAJUX 
JOHN  COTTON. 
PETER  BULKLEY. 
JOHN  NORTON. 
WILUAM  HOOE.E. 
CHARLES  CHAUNCEY. 


Miscellaneous   Prose   f  NATHANIEL  WAID. 
Writers.  \  Roc"  WILLIAMS 


Writers  of  Verse. 


f  GEORGE  SANDYS. 
•I  WILLIAM  MORRELL, 
I  ANNE  BRADSTREET. 


CHAPTER  L 

THE     BEGINNING. 

L— The  Procession  of  the  first  English-speaking  colonies  from  the  old  world 
to  the  new— Our  first  literary  period  that  of  the  planting  of  the  American 
nation— Oar  first  American  writers  immigrant  Americans — True  Fathers 
of  American  Literature — The  literary  traits  they  brought  with  them. 

II.— Why  those  first  Americans  wrote  books — True  classification  of  early 
American  writings — Tidings  sent  back — Controversial  appeals — Defences 
against  calumny— Descriptions  of  the  new  lands — And  of  the  new  life 
there— Books  of  religion — Poetry— Histories— Miscellaneous  prose. 

Ill  —Birth  year  of  American  literature — State  of  English  literature  when 
American  literature  was  born — Interest  of  Englishmen  then  in  their  bar- 
baric American  empire — Departure  from  England  of  the  first  English 
Americans— Michael  Drayton's  farewell  ode  to  them. 

THERE  is  but  one  thing  more  interesting  than  the  intel- 
lectual history  of  a  man,  and  that  is  the  intellectual  history 
of  a  nation.  The  American  people,  starting  into  life  in 
the  early  part  of  the  seventeenth  century,  have  been  busy 
ever  since  in  recording  their  intellectual  history  in  laws, 
manners,  institutions,  in  battles  with  man  and  beast  and 
nature,  in  highways,  excavations,  edifices,  in  pictures,  in 
statues,  in  written  words.  It  is  in  written  words  that  this 
people,  from  the  very  beginning,  have  made  the  most  con- 
fidential and  explicit  record  of  their  minds.  It  is  in  these 
written  words,  therefore,  that  we  shall  now  search  for  that 
record. 


We  need  to  picture  to  ourselves  the  outgoing  of  the 
several  English  colonies  which  made  their  way  hither  in 
our  earliest  time,  joining  that  long,  grim,  many-tongued 
procession  which  during  all  that  era  pushed  westward 
from  Europe  toward  this  hemisphere.  Between  the  year 
1607,  when  Virginia,  the  first  of  these  colonies,  set  its 

5 


6  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

timid  foot  safely  down  on  the  American  shores,  and  the 
year  1682,  when  the  last  of  them,  Pennsylvania,  arrived 
here,  we  are  able  to  count  no  less  than  ten  other  local 
communities,  of  English  blood  and  English  speech,  that 
began  to  find  food  and  lodging  and  some  sense  of  home- 
comfort  in  this  land.  Their  names  will  never  be  too  despi- 
cable to  deserve  repetition  by  us :  they  are,  in  the  order 
of  their  establishment,  Plymouth,  New  Hampshire,  Mas- 
sachusetts Bay,  Maryland,  Connecticut,  Rhode  Island, 
North  Carolina,  New  York,  New  Jersey,  South  Carolina. 
These  English  colonies  of  the  seventeenth  century,  which 
Francis  Bacon  nobly  heralded  as  "  amongst  ancient,  primi- 
tive, and  heroical  works," *  were  not  accidental  things : 
they  formed  parts  of  a  grand  series  of  popular  migrations 
from  the  old  world  to  the  new,  all  stimulated  by  an  im- 
pulse acting  on  many  nations,  and  over  the  space  of  many 
years.  And  so  far  as  it  concerned  England  and  that  por- 
tion of  the  new  world  which  we  now  mean  by  the  word 
America,  the  impulse  just  spoken  of  spent  itself  in  that 
brave  group  of  colonial  enterprises  which  began  with  Vir- 
ginia and  ended  with  Pennsylvania.2  The  present  race  of 
Americans  who  are  of  English  lineage — that  is,  the  most 
numerous  and  decidedly  the  dominant  portion  of  the 
American  people  of  to-day — are  the  direct  descendants  of 
the  crowds  of  Englishmen  who  came  to  America  in  the 
seventeenth  century.  Our  first  literary  period,  therefore, 
fills  the  larger  part  of  that  century  in  which  American 
civilization  had  its  planting;  even  as  its  training  into  some 
maturity  and  power  has  been  the  business  of  the  eigh- 

1 "  Essays,"  XXXIII.— Of  Plantations.  This  essay  contains  several  pas- 
sages evidently  founded  upon  the  author's  observation  of  Virginian  affairs 
as  reported  in  England.  In  one  sentence  he  expressly  mentions  Virginia. 

2  Within  the  territory  which  afterward  became  the  United  States  was 
established  before  the  revolution  one  other  English  colony,  Georgia.  Its 
establishment,  however,  was  in  the  eighteenth  century,  and  was  an  isolated 
event,  due  to  the  philanthropy  of  one  good  man,  who  sought  to  provide  in 
America  a  refuge  for  the  debtors  and  paupers  of  Europe. 


THE  BEGINNING.  7 

teenth  and  the  nineteenth  centuries.  Of  course,  also,  the 
most  of  the  men  who  produced  American  literature  during 
that  period  were  immigrant  authors  of  English  birth  and 
English  culture ;  while  the  most  of  those  who  have  pro- 
duced American  literature  in  the  subsequent  periods  have 
been  authors  of  American  birth  and  of  American  culture. 
Notwithstanding  their  English  birth,  these  first  writers  in 
America  were  Americans :  we  may  not  exclude  them  from 
our  story  of  American  literature.  They  founded  that  lit- 
erature; they  are  its  Fathers;  they  stamped  their  spiritual 
lineaments  upon  it ;  and  we  shall  never  deeply  enter  into 
the  meanings  of  American  literature  in  its  later  forms 
without  tracing  it  back,  affectionately,  to  its  beginning 
with  them.  At  the  same  time,  our  first  literary  epoch  can- 
not fail  to  bear  traces  of  the  fact  that  nearly  all  the  men 
who  made  it  were  Englishmen  who  had  become  Americans 
merely  by  removing  to  America.  American  life,  indeed, 
at  once  reacted  upon  their  minds,  and  began  to  give  its 
tone  and  hue  to  their  words ;  and  for  every  reason,  what 
they  wrote  here,  we  rightfully  claim  as  a  part  of  American 
literature  ;  but  England  has  a  right  to  claim  it  likewise  as 
a  part  of  English  literature.  Indeed  England  and  Amer- 
ica are  joint  proprietors  of  this  first  tract  of  the  great 
literary  territory  which  we  have  undertaken  to  survey. 
Ought  any  one  to  wonder,  however,  if  in  the  American  lit- 
erature of  the  seventeenth  century  he  shall  find  the  distinc- 
tive traits,  good  and  bad,  which  during  the  same  period 
characterized  English  literature  ?  How  could  it  be  other- 
wise? Is  it  likely  that  an  Englishman  undergoes  a  liter- 
ary revolution  by  sitting  down  to  write  in  America  instead 
of  in  England  ;  or  that  he  will  write  either  much  better  or 
much  worse  only  for  having  sailed  across  a  thousand 
leagues  of  brine  ? 

II. 

Undoubtedly  literature  for  its  own  sake  was  not  much 
thought  of,  or  lived  for,  in  those  days.     The  men  and 


8  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITER  A  TURE. 

women  of  force  were  putting  their  force  into  the  strong 
and  most  urgent  tasks  pertaining  to  this  world  and  the 
next.  There  was  an  abundance  of  intellectual  vitality 
among  them  ;  and  the  nation  grew 

"  strong  thru  shifts,  an'  wants,  an'  pains, 
Nussed  by  stern  men  with  empires  in  their  brains."  ' 

Literature  as  a  fine  art,  literature  as  the  voice  and  the 
ministress  of  aesthetic  delight,  they  had  perhaps  little  skill 
in  and  little  regard  for ;  but  literature  as  an  instrument 
of  humane  and  immediate  utility,  they  honored,  and  at 
this  they  wrought  with  all  the  earnestness  that  was 
born  in  their  blood.  They  wrote  books  not  because  they 
cared  to  write  books,  but  because  by  writing  books  they 
could  accomplish  certain  other  things  which  they  did 
care  for. 

And  what  were  those  other  things?  If  we  can  discover 
them  we  shall  at  once  grasp  the  clue  to  the  right  classifica- 
tion and  the  right  interpretation  of  that  still  chaotic  heap 
of  writings  which  make  up  American  literature  in  the  colo- 
nial age. 

i.  The  task  to  which  those  men  and  women  gave  them- 
selves— the  colonization  of  America — was,  under  all  the 
circumstances  of  the  time,  a  very  hard  one,  slow,  weari- 
some, menaced  by  nearly  every  form  of  danger,  full  of  awe 
even  for  stout  hearts.  Their  earliest  motive  for  writing 
books  was  bound  up  in  a  natural  and  even  pathetic  desire 
to  send  back  news  of  themselves  to  the  old  world — that 
safe,  regulated,  populous  world— which  they  had  "left  be- 
hind them  when  they  sailed  out  toward  the  risks  and 
mysteries  of  the  great  ocean  and  of  the  still  greater  wil- 
derness which  lay  hidden  in  the  shadow  beyond  it.  This 
gives  us  our  first  group  of  American  writings,  and  explains 
for  us  a  multitude  of  titles  in  that  primal  period— the 

1  James  Russell  Lowell,  "  The  Biglow  Papers,"  Second  Series,  68. 


THE  BEGINNING.  g 

books  written  upon  the  instant  of  arrival,  and  at  intervals 
afterward,  with  the  purpose  of  sending  home  tidings  of 
welfare  or  of  ill  fare. 

2.  Close  to  this  was  the  fact  that  for  all  of  them  the 
supreme  legal  authority,  and  for  some  of  them  also  the 
source  of  pecuniary  supply,  were  at  home;  and  thither 
they  occasionally  made  appeal  from  the  hot  controversies 
into  which  at  times  they  fell,  pleading  their  causes  before 
a  tribunal  across  the  sea,  in  eager  and  rough-hewn  narra- 
tives, which  still  throb  with  the  passions  that  prompted 
them,  and  arc  authentic  pictures  of  the  thought  and  the 
life  of  those  rugged  days. 

3.  It  was  of  the  utmost  importance  that  the  new  settle- 
ments in  America  should  be  reenforced  in  population  by 
steady  accessions  from  the  dense  multitudes  of  the  old 
world,  especially  of  the  mother-land  ;  and  this  obviously 
depended  on  the  maintenance  there  of  their  good  repute. 
But  their  good  repute  in  England  was  assailed  from  time 
to  time  by  certain  ill-conditioned  persons,  who,  having 
come  to  America,  and  having  left  it  again  either  in  discon- 
tent or  under  compulsion,  sought  vengeance  in  the  publi- 
cation of  injurious  accounts  of  the  country,  the  climate, 
and  the  people.     Curiously  enough,  also,  there  were  in 
England  certain  other  persons— old  Crashawe '  quaintly 
classified  them  at  the  time  as  "  the  papists,  the  players,  and 
the  devil " — who  manifested  a  dislike  toward  the  American 
settlements  not  now  easy  to  be  accounted  for,  and  who 
were  very  busy  in  swelling  the  chorus  of  bad  words  con- 
cerning them.     The  necessity  of  repelling  these  charges 
prompted  in  part  the  composition  of  some  of  the  books 
included  in  the  first  two  groups,  and  also  developed  a  dis- 
tinct class  of  writings — that  of  American  Apologetics. 

4.  Furthermore,  those   uncouth   dusky   creatures,    the 
savage  proprietors  of  the  continent,  whom,  both  in  friend- 


"'  A  New  Year's  Gift  to  Virginia,"  by  W.  Crashawe,  B.D..  London,  1610 
This  tract  is  without  paging. 


IO 


HISTORY  OF  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 


ship  and  in  hostility,  the  colonists  at  once  came  in  contact 
with,  for  a  long  time  seemed  to  our  ancestors  to  be  most 
mysterious  beings,  and  were  the  objects  of  an  unspeakable 
interest  in  England  as  well  as  here.  What  were  those 
creatures?  Were  they  indeed  human  beings?  But  if 
human  beings,  they  must  of  course  be  descended  from 
Adam ;  and  if  descended  from  Adam,  how  did  they  get  to 
America?  And  when  did  they  come?  And  what  had 
they  been  doing  in  America  all  this  time  ?  What,  more- 
over, were  their  forms  of  government,  their  laws,  their 
languages,  their  creeds,  their  domestic  usages,  their  means 
of  livelihood,  the  extent  of  their  intellectual  development  ? 
Above  all  things,  if  they  indeed  had  souls,  could  they  not 
be  reached  by  the  Christian  message  which  would  save 
their  souls?  To  us,  of  course,  the  American  Indian  is  no 
longer  a  mysterious  or  even  an  interesting  personage — he 
is  simply  a  fierce  dull  biped  standing  in  our  way;  and  it  is 
only  by  a  strong  effort  of  the  imagination  that  we  can  in 
any  degree  reproduce  for  ourselves  the  zest  of  ineffable 
curiosity  with  which,  during  the  most  of  the  seventeenth 
century,  he  was  regarded  by  the  English  on  both  sides  of 
the  ocean.  Scarcely  a  book  was  written  here  on  any  sub- 
ject into  which  he  was  not  somehow  introduced  ;  and  there 
remains  to  us  a  large  class  of  writings — our  fourth  group — 
particularly  devoted  to  him,  and  to  the  rather  melancholy 
experiences  of  the  white  people  in  trying  to  live  in  his 
neighborhood. 

5.  Neither  must  it  be  forgotten  that  there  was  in  the  sev- 
enteenth century,  both  for  those  who  came  to  America 
and  for  those  who  remained  in  England,  the  enchantment 
of  utter  novelty  in  the  wild,  magnificent,  tender,  or  terri- 
fying aspects  of  nature,  which  a  voyage  over  the  Atlantic 
and  a  residence  in  the  new  world  would  present — the  new 
heavens  and  the  new  earth  which  they  then  beheld  for  the 
first  time,  the  stupendous  empire  of  unexplored  wilder- 
nesses, the  unwonted  wrath  of  earthquakes,  thunders,  and 
winds,  the  new  vegetation,  the  new  specimens  of  beast 


THE  BEGINNING.  \  \ 

and  bird  and  fish,  and  whatever  vision  they  had  of  majesty 
or  loveliness  in  the  American  landscapes.  Thus  we  have 
as  our  fifth  grqu^of  wjritings^thc  books  descriptive  of  na- 


6.  There  was  still  another  realm  of  novelty  in  America 
that  the  people   of    England   desired  to   look  into  —  the 
new  organization  of  society  which  the  altered  conditions 
of  life  in  the  new  world  compelled  the  English  colonists 
to  develop,  their  gradual   innovations  in   politics,   laws, 
creeds,  in  religious  and  domestic  usages,  the  new  crystal- 
lization of  church  and  state  slowly  working  itself  clear  in 
the  English  kingdom  of  America. 

7.  The  several  groups  of  writings  which  have  been  men- 
tioned thus  far,  sprang  in  considerable  measure  from  mo- 
tives looking  toward  the  love,   or  the  interest,   or  the 
authority   of  the  people  of   England,  from  whom  those 
earliest   Americans   had  but    recently  withdrawn    them- 
selves.    These  groups  of  writings,  however,  by  no  means 
constitute  a  moiety  of  American  literature  even  in  our 
first  period.    By  far  the  larger  portion  of  our  writings  were 
composed  for  our  own  people  alone,  and  with  reference  to 
our  own  interests,  inspirations,  and  needs.     These  include, 
first,  sermons  and  other  religious  treatises  ;  second,  histo- 
ries ;  and  third,  poetry  and  some  examples  of  miscellane- 
ous prose. 

III. 

Since  the  earliest  English  colonists  upon  these  shores 
began  to  make  a  literature  as  soon  as  they  arrived  here,  it 
follows  that  we  can  fix  the  exact  date  of  the  birth  of 
American  literature.  It  is  that  year  1607,  when  English- 
men, by  transplanting  themselves  to  America,  first  began 
to  be  Americans.  Thus  may  the  history  of  our  literature 
be  traced  back  from  the  present  hour,  as  it  recedes  along 
the  track  of  our  national  life,  through  the  early  days  of 
the  republic,  through  five  generations  of  colonial  exist- 
ence, until,  in  the  first  decade  of  the  seventeenth  century, 


1 2  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITER  A  TURE. 

it  is  merged  in  its  splendid  parentage — the  written  speech 
of  England.  And  the  birth-epoch  of  American  literature 
was  a  fortunate  one :  it  was  amid  the  full  magnificence  of 
the  Elizabethan  period,  whose  creative  vitality,  whose  su- 
perb fruitage,  reached  forward  and  cast  their  glory  across 
the  entire  generation  succeeding  the  death  of  Elizabeth 
herself.  The  first  lispings  of  American  literature  were 
heard  along  the  sands  of  the  Chesapeake  and  near  the 
gurgling  tides  of  the  James  River,  at  the  very  time  when 
the  firmament  of  English  literature  was  all  ablaze  with 
the  light  of  her  full-orbed  and  most  wonderful  writers,  the 
wits,  the  dramatists,  scholars,  orators,  singers,  philosophers, 
who  formed  that  incomparable  group  of  titanic  men  gath- 
ered in  London  during  the  earlier  years  of  the  seventeenth 
century ;  when  the  very  air  of  London  must  have  been 
electric  with  the  daily  words  of  those  immortals,  whose 
casual  talk  upon  the  pavement  by  the  street-side  was  a 
coinage  of  speech  richer,  more  virile,  more  expressive, 
than  has  been  known  on  this  planet  since  the  great  days 
of  Athenian  poetry,  eloquence,  and  mirth. 

I  find  it  hard  to  hasten  past  this  event — the  dawn  upon 
the  world  of  American  literature  and  of  American  civili- 
zation. It  is  pleasant  to  trace  in  contemporaneous  Eng- 
lish literature  some  tokens  of  the  interest  which  the  Eng- 
lish people  of  that  day  took  in  the  romantic  and  peril- 
ous enterprise  of  laying  the  foundations  of  a  new  English 
commonwealth  beyond  the  ocean,  and  of  extending  the 
domain  of  their  own  speech  into  lands  remote  and  illimi- 
table. All  along  during  the  latter  half  of  the  reign  of  Eliz- 
abeth attempt  after  attempt  had  been  made  by  her  in- 
domitable subjects  to  get  a  foothold  in  that  portion  of 
America  which  she  claimed  as  hers  and  which  in  her 
honor  was  named  Virginia.  All  these  attempts  had  failed, 
some  of  them  tragically.  In  the  very  last  year  of  her 
reign,  however,  a  glorious  old  English  sailor  had  come 
back  to  England  with  the  great  tidings  that  he  had  found 
it  possible  to  make  the  voyage  to  Virginia  by  shooting  his 


THE  BEGINNING. 


<3 


ships  straight  to  the  west,  thus  avoiding  the  tedious,  costly, 
sickly  route  thither  by  way  of  the  West  Indies.  This  bit 
of  news  sent  a  thrill  of  excitement  through  England  ;  it 
was  talked  over  at  innumerable  firesides ;  it  caused  a  great 
buzz  and  fluttering  among  the  merchants  and  bankers  on 
the  London  Exchange ;  it  was  caught  up  and  tossed 
about  on  the  stage  of  the  London  theatres,  which  then 
had  the  function  now  filled  by  daily  newspapers  for  the 
public  discussion  of  current  events.1  From  that  moment 
a  fresh  impulse  was  given  to  the  interest  of  Englishmen  in 
Virginia — their  own  vast,  unpossessed,  barbaric  empire, 
now  made  more  accessible  to  them,  and  supposed  by  them 
to  be  fat  with  gold  and  precious  stones  and  all  sorts  of  un- 
imaginable treasures.1  Multitudes  of  Englishmen  became 
eager  to  go  to  Virginia,  even  as  in  our  own  time,  from  the 
same  quenchless  passion  for  swiftly  gotten  wealth,  we  have 
seen  men  eager  to  go  to  the  gold  fields  of  California  and 
Australia.  And  year  by  year  during  the  early  portion  of 
the  reign  of  James  the  First,  the  desire  for  a  new  attempt 
to  get  possession  of  Virginia  crept  up  among  the  highest 
classes,  and  down  among  the  lowest ;  and  in  April  of 
the  year  1606  a  royal  patent  was  conferred  on  certain 
44  firm  and  hearty  lovers "  of  colonization,  giving  them 
power  to  conduct  a  colony  thither.  Then  once  more  the 
good  work  went  forward  with  vigor  and  glee.  All  the 
summer  and  all  the  autumn  of  that  year  were  spent  in 
making  ready  the  intended  expedition.  For  several  weeks 
before  setting  sail,  the  three  vessels  that  were  to  carry  the 
colonists  had  waited  in  the  Thames  while  the  managers 
were  completing  their  preparations.  During  that  time  the 
eyes  of  all  London  were  upon  them ;  prayers  for  their 
safety  were  offered  in  the  churches;  and  one  of  the  mighty 
poets  of  England,  Michael  Drayton,  poured  into  a  noble 


'  E.  D.  Neill.  "  HUt.  of  Va.  Co.  of  London,"  YU 

•  John  Marston'i  Works,  Halliwell'i  ed.,  1856,  Vol.  III.,  play  of  "  Eastward 
Ho." 


!4  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

ode  the  high  hope,  the  anxiety,  the  ambition,  the  eager 
sympathy,  with  which  all  ranks  of  thoughtful  and  watch- 
ful Englishmen  were  sending  the  travellers  out  upon  their 
great  quest. 

"  You  brave  heroic  minds, 
Worthy  your  country's  name, 

That  honor  still  pursue, 
Whilst  loit'ring  hinds 
Lurk  here  at  home  with  shame, 
Go  and  subdue. 

Britons,  you  stay  too  long  : 
Quickly  aboard  bestow  you; 

And  with  a  merry  gale 

Swell  your  stretch'd  sail 
With  vows  as  strong 
As  the  winds  that  blow  you. 


And  cheerfully  at  sea, 
Success  you  still  entice, 

To  get  the  pearl  and  gold  ; 

And  ours  to  hold ; 
Virginia, 
Earth's  only  paradise. 


In  kenning  of  the  shore, 
Thanks  to  God  first  given, 

O  you  the  happiest  men. 

Be  frolic  then ; 
Let  cannons  roar, 
Frighting  the  wide  heaven. 

And  in  regions  far 

Such  heroes  bring  ye  forth, 

As  those  from  whom  we  came; 

And  plant  our  name 
Under  that  star 
Not  known  unto  our  north." 


THE  BEGIN  KING.  15 

Thus  far  in  his  ode,  the  poet  gives  voice  merely  to  the 
sturdy  joy  which  by  nature  every  Englishman  has  in  daring 
adventure,  in  the  victories  of  heroism,  in  the  hops  of  a 
vast  enlargement  of  his  country's  wealth  and  imperial 
sway.  But  this  grand  old  Elizabethan  singer  could  not 
stifle  another  ambition — the  ambition  that  England  might 
win  for  herself  in  America  even  nobler  trophies  than  those 
of  political  dominion  and  material  wealth.  With  the  pride 
of  an  English  poet  and  of  an  English  man  of  letters,  he 
utters  in  a  single  stanza  the  superb  prediction  of  a  new 
English  literature  to  spring  up  in  that  far-off  land.  In 
poetic  vision  he  then  foresaw,  and  he  hailed  and  greeted 
from  afar,  the  unborn  poets  that  were  to  rise  beyond  the 
Atlantic,  and,  under  new  constellations  as  he  supposed, 
were  to  create  a  new  empire  of  English  letters : 

"And  as  there  plenty  grows 
Of  laurel  everywhere. — 
Apollo's  sacred  tree, 
You.  it  may  see. 
A  poet's  brows 
To  crown,  that  may  sing  there."  ' 

1  Work*  of  Drmjnon,  Anderson's  «L,  §83. 


CHAPTER  II. 

VIRGINIA:   THE   FIRST   WRITER. 

I. — The  arrival  in  America  of  the  first  Americans — A  fortunate  blunder — 
Satisfaction  with  their  new  home. 

II. — The  sort  of  men  they  were — Their  leaders — Captain  John  Smith — His 
previous  career — His  character — His  important  relation  to  early  American 
settlements — The  first  writer  in  American  literature. 

III. — His  first  book — Its  publication  in  London  in  1608 — A  literary  syn- 
chronism— American  literature  and  John  Milton — Synopsis  of  the  book — 
Notable  passages — The  fable  of  his  rescue  by  Pocahontas — The  place  of 
the  book  at  the  head  of  American  literature — Summary  of  its  literary  traits. 

IV. — His  second  American  writing — A  bold  letter  to  his  London  patrons — 
His  knowledge  refusing  to  be  commanded  by  their  ignorance — The  kind 
of  men  to  make  good  colonists  of — Early  symptoms  of  American  recal- 
citrance. 

V. — His  third  American  work — Vivid  pictures  of  Virginia — The  climate — 
The  country — The  productions — The  Indians — His  fine  statement  of  the 
utility  of  the  Virginian  enterprise. 

VI. — Captain  John  Smith's  return  to  England — His  subsequent  career — A 
baffled  explorer — His  pride  in  the  American  colonies — Utilized  by  the 
playwrights — Thomas  Fuller's  sarcastic  account  of  him — His  champions 
— Final  estimate. 

I. 

THE  three  little  ships  which  bore  so  many  hopes,  drop- 
ping from  London  down  the  Thames  on  the  2Oth  of  De- 
cember,1 1606,  were  vexed  by  opposing  winds  and  were 
kept  shivering  within  sight  of  the  English  coast  for  seve- 
ral weeks ;  then,  instead  of  pursuing  the  straightforward 
westerly  course  to  America,  they  curved  southward,  mean- 
dering foolishly  by  the  Canaries,  Dominica,  Guadeloupe 
and  elsewhere,  to  the  great  loss  of  time,  food,  health,  and 
patience ;  and  did  not  reach  their  journey's  end  until  the 
26th  of  April,  1607 — a  journey's  end  to  which  they  were 
at  last  blown  by  the  providence  of  a  rough  storm,  after 

1  George  Percy,  in  Purchas,  IV.  1685. 

16 


THE  FIRST  WRITER.  \j 

u  the  mariners  had  three  days  passed  their  reckoning  and 
found  no  land." '  No  blunder  in  man's  performance  could 
have  been  more  happily  condoned  by  Heaven's  pity;  for 
these  poor  little  ships,  groping  along  the  coast  of  America 
in  great  geographic  darkness,  and  seeking  only  "  to  find 
out  a  safe  port  in  the  entrance  of  some  navigable  river,"* 
were  guided  by  the  finger  of  Him  who  points  out  the 
tracks  of  the  winds  and  the  courses  of  national  destiny, 
into  the  noblest  bay  along  the  whole  coast,  and  upon  a 
land  of  balm  and  verdure.  They  had  come  to  Virginia  at 
the  happy  moment  when  nature  in  that  region  wears  her 
sweetest  smile  and  sings  her  loveliest  notes.  They  were 
amazed,  as  one*  of  them  tells  us,  at  the  opulence  of  life 
visible  all  about  them ;  at  the  oysters  "  which  lay  on  the 
ground  as  thick  as  stones,"  many  with  pearls  in  them ;  at 
the  earth  "  all  flowing  over  with  fair  flowers  of  sundry 
colors  and  kinds,  as  though  it  had  been  in  any  garden  or 
orchard  in  England ; "  at  "  the  woods  full  of  cedar  and 
cypress  trees,  with  other  trees  which  issue  out  sweet  gums, 
like  to  balsam."  "  Heaven  and  earth,"  exclaimed  another4 
of  that  delighted  company,  "  never  agreed  better  to  frame 
a  place  for  man's  habitation." 

II. 

Thus  began  our  American  civilization  ;  and  among  those 
first  Englishmen  huddled  together  behind  palisadoes  in 
Jamestown  in  1607,  were  some  who  laid  the  foundations 
of  American  literature.  There  were  about  a  hundred  of 
them  all.  As  we  look  over  the  ancient  list  of  their  names 
and  designations,  we  alight  upon  some  facts  which  bode 
little  good  to  an  enterprise  in  which  there  is  no  safe  room 
for  persons  afflicted  with  constitutional  objections  to  hard 

'C«pt.  J.  Smith,  "Gen.  Hist"  I.  150. 

•From  their  Instruction!,  given  in  Neill,  "  Hist  V*.  Co.  Lond."  9. 

•  George  Percy,  in  Purchas,  IV.  1688. 

«C*pt.  J.  Smith.  "Gen.  Hist."  I.  114. 


!  g  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITER  A  TURE. 

work.  The  earliest  formal  History  of  Virginia1  contains 
testimony  that  herein  lay  the  worst  peril  of  the  enterprise  ; 
that  besides  one  carpenter,  two  blacksmiths,  two  sailors, 
and  a  few  others  named  "  laborers,"  "  all  the  rest  were 
poor  gentlemen,  tradesmen,  serving -men,  libertines,  and 
such  like,  ten  times  more  fit  to  spoil  a  commonwealth  than 
either  begin  one,  or  but  help  to  maintain  one."  But  in 
this  heterogeneous  party  of  forcible  Peebles,  were  a  few 
men  of  some  grip  and  note,  such  as  brave  old  Bartholomew 
Gosnold,  Edward  Maria  Wingfield,  John  Martin,  Gabriel 
Archer,  Robert  Hunt  their  saintly  chaplain,  and  George 
Percy  a  brother  of  the  Earl  of  Northumberland.  And 
there  was  one  other  man  in  that  little  group  of  adventurers 
who  still  has  a  considerable  name  in  the  world.  In  that 
year  1607,  when  he  first  set  foot  in  Virginia,  Captain  John 
Smith  was  only  twenty-seven  years  old  ;  but  even  then  he 
had  made  himself  somewhat  famous  in  England  as  a  dar- 
ing traveller  in  Southern  Europe,  in  Turkey  and  the  East. 
He  was  perhaps  the  last  professional  knight-errant  that 
the  world  saw ;  a  free  lance,  who  could  not  hear  of  a  fight 
going  on  anywhere  in  the  world  without  hastening  to  have 
a  hand  in  it ;  a  sworn  champion  of  the  ladies  also,  all  of 
whom  he  loved  too  ardently  to  be  guilty  of  the  invidious 
offence  of  marrying  any  one  of  them  ;  a  restless,  vain, 
ambitious,  overbearing,  blustering  fellow,  who  made  all 
men  either  his  hot  friends  or  his  hot  enemies  ;  a  man  who 
down  to  the  present  hour  has  his  celebrity  in  the  world 
chiefly  on  account  of  alleged  exploits  among  Turks,  Tar- 
tars, and  Indians,  of  which  exploits  he  alone  has  furnished 
the  history — never  failing  to  celebrate  himself  in  them  all 
as  the  one  resplendent  and  invincible  hero. 

This  extremely  vivid  and  resolute  man  comes  before  us 
now  for  particular  study,  not  because  he  was  the  most 
conspicuous  person  in  the  first  successful  American  colony, 
but  because  he  was  the  writer  of  the  first  book  in  Amer- 

1  Capt.  J.  Smith,  "Gen.  Hist."  I.  241. 


THE  FIRST  WHITER. 


'9 


ican  literature.  It  is  impossible  to  doubt  that  as  a  story- 
teller he  fell  into  the  traveller's  habit  of  drawing  a  long 
bow.  In  the  narration  of  incidents  that  had  occurred  in 
his  own  wild  life  he  had  an  aptitude  for  being  intensely 
interesting ;  and  it  seemed  to  be  his  theory  that  if  the  ori- 
ginal facts  were  not  in  themselves  quite  so  interesting  as 
they  should  have  been,  so  much  the  worse  for  the  original 
facts.  Yet  in  spite  of  this  habit,  Captain  John  Smith  had 
many  great  and  magnanimous  qualities;  and  we  surely 
cannot  help  being  drawn  to  him  with  affectionate  admira- 
tion, when  we  remember  his  large  services  in  the  work  of 
colonizing  both  Virginia  and  New  England,  his  sufferings 
in  that  cause,  and  his  unquenchable  love  for  it  until  death. 
In  his  later  life,  after  he  had  been  baffled  in  many  of  his 
plans  and  hopes,  he  wrote,  in  London,  of  the  American 
colonies  these  words :  "  By  that  acquaintance  I  have  with 
them,  I  call  them  my  children ;  for  they  have  been  my 
wife,  my  hawks,  hounds,  my  cards,  my  dice,  and  in  total 
my  best  content,  as  indifferent  to  my  heart  as  my  left  hand 
to  my  right."  * 

Then,  too,  as  students  of  literature  we  shall  be  drawn 
to  Captain  John  Smith  as  belonging  to  that  noble  type  of 
manhood  of  which  the  Elizabethan  period  produced  so 
many  examples — the  man  of  action  who  was  also  a  man  of 
letters,  the  man  of  letters  who  was  also  a  man  of  action : 
the  wholesomest  type  of  manhood  anywhere  to  be  found ; 
body  and  brain  both  active,  both  cultivated  ;  the  mind  not 
made  fastidious  and  morbid  by  too  much  bookishness,  nor 
coarse  and  dull  by  too  little ;  not  a  doer  who  is  dumb,  not 
a  speech-maker  who  cannot  do  ;  the  knowledge  that  comes 
of  books  widened  and  freshened  by  the  knowledge  that 
comes  of  experience ;  the  literary  sense  fortified  by  com- 
mon sense ;  the  bashfulness  and  delicacy  of  the  scholar 

1  Smith's  "Gen.  Hist"  in  Pinkerton.  XIII.  245.  He  adds,  in  the  plain 
English  of  the  period :  "for  all  their  discoveries  I  hare  yet  heard  of  are 
bat  pigs  of  my  own  sow." 


20  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

hovering  as  a  finer  presence  above  the  forceful  audacity  of 
the  man  of  the  world  ;  at  once  bookman,  penman,  swords- 
man, diplomat,  sailor,  courtier,  orator.  Of  this  type  of 
manhood,  spacious,  strong,  refined,  and  sane,  were  the 
best  men  of  the  Elizabethan  time,  George  Gascoigne, 
Sir  Philip  Sidney,  Sir  Walter  Raleigh,  and  in  a  modified 
sense  Hakluyt,  Bacon,  Sackville,  Shakespeare,  Ben  Jon- 
son,  and  nearly  all  the  rest.  To  this  type  of  manhood 
Captain  John  Smith  aspired  to  belong.  "  Many  of  the 
most  eminent  warriors,"  said  he,  "  what  their  swords  did, 
their  pens  writ.  Though  I  be  never  so  much  their  inferior, 
yet  I  hold  it  no  great  error  to  follow  good  examples."1 
In  another  book,2  he  expanded  the  thought  in  a  way  that 
shows  it  to  have  been  a  pleasant  one  to  him  :  "This  his- 
tory .  .  .  might  and  ought  to  have  been  clad  in  better 
robes  than  my  rude  military  hand  can  cut  out  in  paper 
ornaments;  but  because  of  the  most  things  therein  I  am 
no  compiler  by  hearsay  but  have  been  a  real  actor,  I 
take  myself  to  have  a  property  in  them,  and  therefore 
have  been  bold  to  challenge  them  to  come  under  the 
reach  of  my  own  rough  pen."  And  that  he  had  achieved 
his  ambition  for  this  spherical  form  of  excellence  was  the 
belief  of  many  of  his  contemporaries,  one  of  whom  wrote 
thus  of  him  and  of  his  book  on  the  history  of  Virginia  and 
New  England : 

"  Like  Caesar  now  thou  writ'st  what  thou  hast  done, 
These  acts,  this  book,  will  live  while  there's  a  sun." 3 


III. 

Captain    John     Smith    became     a    somewhat    prolific 
author ; 4  but  while  nearly  all  of  his  books  have  a  leading 

1  Dedication  of  "  True  Travels." 

2  "General  History,"  I.  57. 

3  Capt.  J.  Smith's  "  General  History,"  I.  65. 

4  For  a  complete  list  of  his  writings,  see  Charles  Deane's  ed.  of  Smith's 
"True  Relation,"  Preface,  xlvi. 


THE  FIRST  WRITER.  21 

reference  to  America,  only  three  of  them  were  written 
during  the  period  of  his  residence  as  a  colonist  in  America. 
Only  these  three,  therefore,  can  be  claimed  by  us  as  be- 
longing to  the  literature  of  our  country. 

The  first  of  these  books,  "A  True  Relation  of  Vir- 
ginia," *  is  of  deep  interest  to  us,  not  only  on  account  of 
its  graphic  style  and  the  strong  light  it  throws  upon  the 
very  beginning  of  our  national  history,  but  as  being  un- 
questionably the  earliest  book  in  American  literature.  It 
was  written  during  the  first  thirteen  months  of  the  life  of 
the  first  American  colony,  and  gives  a  simple  and  pictu- 
resque account  of  the  stirring  events  which  took  place 
there  during  that  time,  under  his  own  eye.  It  was  prob- 
ably carried  to  London  by  Captain  Nelson  of  the  good 
ship  Phoenix,  which  sailed  from  Jamestown  on  the  second 
of  June,  1608  ;  and  it  was  published  in  London  and  sold 
"  at  the  Grey-hound  in  Paul's  Church-Yard,"  in  the  latter 
part  of  the  same  year — not  far  from  the  very  day  when 
the  child  John  Milton  was  born,  and  in  a  house  only  three 
streets  distant.  Perhaps  I  may  be  pardoned  for  indulging 
what  will  seem  to  some  a  mere  literary  caprice,  by  placing 
these  two  events  side  by  side  in  this  history,  even  as  they 
were  placed  side  by  side  in  the  happenings  of  actual  fact. 
John  Milton  was  born  into  life,  and  the  first  American 
book  was  born  into  print,  in  the  same  year,  and  in  the 
same  part  of  the  year,  and  almost  on  the  same  spot.  The 
child  born  on  that  ninth  of  December,  1608,  in  Bread 
Street,  a  few  steps  from  the  book-shop  where  the  earliest 
of  American  writings  was  first  placed  on  sale — the  child 
around  whose  cradle  may  have  been  repeated  by  his  father 
some  of  the  wild  and  exciting  incidents  related  in  that 
book — was  to  grow  up  into  a  colossal  literary  figure  not 
only  in  that  century  but  in  all  centuries :  he  was  to  be  in 
an  eminent  degree  the  exponent  of  the  great  ideas  of 

1  Reprinted,  Boston.  1866,  and  edited  in  his  own  admirable  manner,  with 
fulness  of  learning  and  great  accuracy,  by  Charles  Deane. 


22  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITER  A  TURE, 

religious  and  political  freedom  that  were  to  form  the  basis 
of  American  civilization,  which,  like  himself,  was  then  be- 
ginning to  live ;  and  the  moral  peculiarities  of  his  genius, 
austere  earnestness,  a  devout  ethical  force,  an  obstinate 
habit  of  judging  of  life  and  even  of  art  and  letters  from 
the  throne  of  moral  laws  and  of  moral  tendencies,  were  to 
be  likewise  the  most  marked  spiritual  qualities  of  that  re- 
mote and  unfriended  national  literature  which  began  its 
career  almost  at  the  very  same  moment  when  he  began 
his,  and  almost  on  the  very  same  spot. 

The  title-pages  of  the  seventeenth  century  are  not  the 
least  expressive  or  amusing  portions  of  the  books  of  that 
century ;  and  if  ever  an  old  title-page  shall  deserve  full 
quotation  at  our  hands,  this  does  so.  It  is  as  follows  :  "  A 
True  Relation  of  such  occurrences  and  accidents  of  note  as 
hath  happened  in  Virginia  since  the  first  planting  of  that 
colony,  which  is  now  resident  in  the  South  part  thereof, 
till  the  last  return  from  thence.  Written  by  Captain 
Smith,  Coronel  of  the  said  colony,  to  a  worshipful  friend 
of  his  in  England.  London  :  Printed  for  John  Tappe,  and 
are  to  be  sold  at  the  Grey-hound  in  Paul's  Church-Yard, 
by  W.  W.  1608." 

/  Barely  hinting  at  the  length  and  tediousness  of  the  sea- 
voyage,  the  author  plunges  with  epic  promptitude  into 
the  midst  of  the  action  by  describing  their  arrival  in  Vir- 
ginia, their  first  ungentle  passages  with  the  Indians,  their 
selection  of  a  place  of  settlement,  their  first  civil  organi- 
zation, their  first  expedition  for  discovery  toward  the 
upper  waters  of  the  James  River,  the  first  formidable  In- 
dian attack  upon  their  village,  and  the  first  return  for 
England,  two  months  after  their  arrival,  of  the  ships  that 
had  brought  them  to  Virginia.  Upon  the  departure  of 
these  ships,  bitter  quarrels  broke  out  among  the  colonists ; 
"things  were  neither  carried  with  that  discretion  nor 
any  business  effected  in  such  good  sort  as  wisdom  would ; 
.  .  .  through  which  disorder,  God  being  angry  with  us 
plagued  us  with  such  famine  and  sickness  that  the  living 


THE  FIRST  WRITER.  2$ 

were  scarce  able  to  bury  the  dead.  ...  As  yet  we  had 
no  houses  to  cover  us;  our  tents  were  rotten,  and  our 
cabins  worse  than  nought.  .  .  .  The  president  and 
Captain  Martin's  sickness  compelled  me  to  be  cape-mer- 
chant,1 and  yet  to  spare  no  pains  in  making  houses  for  the 
company,  who,  notwithstanding  our  misery,  little  ceased 
their  malice,  grudging,  and  muttering  .  .  .  being  in 
such  despair  as  they  would  rather  starve  and  rot  with  idle- 
ness than  be  persuaded  to  do  anything  for  their  own  relief 
without  constraint."'  But  the  energetic  Captain  had  an 
eager  passion  for  making  tours  of  exploration  along  the 
coast  and  up  the  rivers  ;  and  after  telling  how  he  procured 
corn  from  the  Indians  and  thus  supplied  the  instant  ne- 
cessities of  the  starving  colonists,  he  proceeds  to  relate 
the  history  of  a  tour  of  discovery  made  by  him  up  the 
Chickahominy,  on  which  tour  happened  the  famous  inci- 
dent of  his  falling  into  captivity  among  the  Indians.  The 
reader  will  not  fail  to  notice  that  in  this  earliest  book  of 
his,  written  before  Powhatan's  daughter,  the  princess  Po- 
cahontas,  had  become  celebrated  in  England,  and  before 
Captain  Smith  had  that  enticing  motive  for  representing 
himself  as  specially  favored  by  her,  he  speaks  of  Powhatan 
as  full  of  friendliness  to  him  ;  he  expressly  states  that  his 
own  life  was  in  no  danger  at  the  hands  of  that  Indian  po- 
tentate ;  and  of  course  he  has  no  situation  on  which  to 
hang  the  romantic  incident  of  his  rescue  by  Pocahontas 
from  impending  death.'  Having  ascended  the  Chicka- 
hominy about  sixty  miles,  he  took  with  him  a  single  Indian 
guide  and  pushed  into  the  woods.  Within  a  quarter  of  an 
hour  he  "heard  a  loud  cry  and  a  hallooing  of  Indians;" 
and  almost  immediately  he  was  assaulted  by  two  hundred 
of  them,  led  by  Opechancanough,  an  under-king  to  the 
emperor  Powhatan.  The  valiant  Captain,  in  a  contest  so 

1  Treasurer. 

'  "True  Relation."  Deane's  ed.,  12-15. 

*  This  pretty  story  has  now  lost  historical  credit,  and  is  generally  giren  up 
by  critical  students  of  oar  early  history. 


24  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITER  A  TURE. 

unequal,  certainly  was  entitled  to  a  shield;  and  this  he 
rather  ungenerously  extemporized  by  seizing  his  Indian 
guide  and  with  his  garters  binding  the  Indian's  arm  to  his 
own  hand,  thus,  as  he  coolly  expresses  it,  making  "  my  hind  " 
"my  barricado."  As  the  Indians  still  pressed  toward  him, 
Captain  Smith  discharged  his  pistol,  which  wounded  some 
of  his  assailants  and  taught  them  all  a  wholesome  respect 
by  the  terror  of  its  sound  ;  then,  after  much  parley,  he  sur- 
rendered to  them,  and  was  carried  off  prisoner  to  a  place 
about  six  miles  distant.  There  he  expected  to  be  at  once 
put  to  death,  but  was  agreeably  surprised  by  being  treated 
with  the  utmost  kindness.  For  supper  that  night  they 
gave  him  "  a  quarter  of  venison  and  some  ten  pound  of 
bread  ;  "  and  each  morning  thereafter  three  women  pre- 
sented him  with  "  three  great  platters  of  fine  bread,"  and 
"more  venison  than  ten  men  could  devour."  "Though 
eight  ordinarily  guarded  me,  I  wanted  not  what  they 
could  devise  to  content  me  ;  and  still  our  larger  acquaint- 
ance increased  our  better  affection."1  After  many  days 
spent  in  travelling  hither  and  yon  with  his  captors,  he  was 
at  last,  by  his  own  request,  delivered  up  to  Powhatan,  the 
over-lord  of  all  that  region.  He  gives  a  picturesque  de- 
scription of  the  barbaric  state  in  which  he  was  received  by 
this  potent  chieftain,  whom  he  found  "  proudly  lying  upon 
a  bedstead  a  foot  high,  upon  ten  or  twelve  mats,"  the  em- 
peror himself  being  "  richly  hung  with  many  chains  of 
great  pearls  about  his  neck,  and  covered  with  a  great  cov- 
ering of  raccoon  skins.  At  head  sat  a  woman  ;  at  his 
feet,  another ;  on  each  side,  sitting  upon  a  mat  upon  the 
ground  were  ranged  his  chief  men  on  each  side  the  fire, 
ten  in  a  rank  ;  and  behind  them,  as  many  young  women, 
each  a  great  chain  of  white  beads  over  their  shoulders, 
their  heads  painted  in  red ;  and  with  such  a  grave  and 
majestical  countenance  as  drave  me  into  admiration  to 
see  such  state  in  a  naked  salvage.  He  kindly  welcomed 

1  "  True  Relation  of  Va."  22-33. 


THE  FIRST  WRITER.  2$ 

me  with  good  words,  and  great  platters  of  sundry  victuals, 
assuring  me  his  friendship  and  my  liberty  within  four 
days."  Thus  day  by  day  passed  in  pleasant  discourse 
with  his  imperial  host,  who  asked  him  about  "  the  manner 
of  our  ships,  and  sailing  the  seas,  the  earth  and  skies,  and 
of  our  God,"  and  who  feasted  him  not  only  with  contin- 
ual "  platters  of  sundry  victuals,"  but  with  glowing  de- 
scriptions of  his  own  vast  dominions  stretching  away 
beyond  the  rivers  and  the  mountains  to  the  land  of  the 
setting  sun.  "  Seeing  what  pride  he  had  in  his  great  and 
spacious  dominions,  ...  I  requited  his  discourse  in 
describing  to  him  the  territories  of  Europe  which  was 
subject  to  our  great  king,  .  .  .  the  innumerable  mul- 
titude of  his  ships.  I  gave  him  to  understand  the  noise 
of  trumpets  and  terrible  manner  of  fighting  were  under 
Captain  Newport  my  father.  .  .  .  Thus  having  with 
all  the  kindness  he  could  devise  sought  to  content  me, 
he  sent  me  home  with  four  men,  one  that  usually  car- 
ried my  gown  and  knapsack  after  me,  two  other  loaded 
with  bread,  and  one  to  accompany  me." !  yThe  author 
then  gives  a  description  of  his  journey  back  to  Jamestown, 
where  "  each  man  with  truest  signs  of  joy "  welcomed 
him  ;  of  his  second  visit  to  Powhatan  ;  of  various  encoun- 
ters with  hostile  and  thievish  Indians  ;  and  of  the  arrival 
from  England  of  Captain  Nelson  in  the  Phoenix,  April  the 
twentieth,  1608 — an  event  which  "did  ravish"  them  "with 
exceeding  joy."  Late  in  the  narrativfc  he  makes  his  first 
reference  to  Pocahontas,  whom  he  speaks  of  as  "  a  child  of 
ten  years  old,  which  not  only  for  feature,  countenance  and 
proportion  much  exceedeth  any  of  the  rest  of  his  people, 
but  for  wit  and  spirit  the  only  nonpareil  of  his  country."* 
After  mentioning  some  further  dealings  with  the  Indians, 
he  concludes  the  book  with  an  account  of  the  preparations 
for  the  return  to  England  of  Captain  Nelson  and  his  ship ; 

1  "  True  Relation  of  Va."  33-38. 
•  Ibid.  72-73- 


26  J1ISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITER  A  TURE. 

and  describes  those  remaining  as  "  being  in  good  health, 
all  our  men  well  contented,  free  from  mutinies,  in  love 
one  with  another,  and  as  we  hope  in  a  continual  peace 
with  the  Indians,  where  we  doubt  not  but  by  God's  gra- 
cious assistance  and  the  adventurers'  willing  minds  and 
speedy  furtherance  to  so  honorable  an  action  in  after 
times,  to  see  our  nation  to  enjoy  a  country,  not  only  ex- 
ceeding pleasant  for  habitation,  but  also  very  profitable  for 
commerce  in  general,  no  doubt  pleasing  to  Almighty  God, 
honorable  to  our  gracious  sovereign,  and  commodious 
generally  to  the  whole  kingdom."  ! 

Thus,  with  words  of  happy  omen,  ends  the  first  book  in 
American  literature.  It  is  a  book  that  was  written,  not  in 
lettered  ease,  nor  in  "  the  still  air  of  delightful  studies," 
but  under  a  rotten  tent  in  the  wilderness,  perhaps  by  the 
flickering  blaze  of  a  pine  knot,  in  the  midst  of  tree-stumps 
and  the  filth  and  clamor  of  a  pioneer's  camp,  and  within 
the  fragile  palisades  which  alone  shielded  the  little  band 
of  colonists  from  the  ever-hovering  peril  of  an  Indian 
massacre.  It  was  not  composed  as  a  literary  effort.  It 
was  meant  to  be  merely  a  budget  of  information  for  the 
public  at  home,  and  especially  for  the  London  stockholders 
of  the  Virginia  Company.  Hastily,  apparently  without 
revision,  it  was  wrought  vehemently  by  the  rough  hand  of 
a  soldier  and  an  explorer,  in  the  pauses  of  a  toil  that  was 
both  fatiguing  and  dangerous,  and  while  the  incidents 
which  he  records  were  fresh  and  clinging  in  his  memory. 
Probably  he  thought  little  of  any  rules  of  literary  art  as  he 
wrote  this  book  :  probably  he  did  not  think  of  writing  a 
book  at  all.  Out  of  the  abundance  of  his  materials,  glow- 
ing with  pride  over  what  he  had  done  in  the  great  enter- 
prise, eager  to  inspire  the  home-keeping  patrons  of  the 
colony  with  his  own  resolute  cheer,  and  accustomed  for 
years  to  portray  in  pithy  English  the  adventures  of  which 
his  life  was  fated  to  be  full,  the  bluff  Captain  just  stabbed 

1  "  True  Relation  of  Va."  76-77. 


THE  FIRST  WRITER.  2J 

his  paper  with  inken  words;  he  composed  not  a  book  but 
a  big  letter ;  he  folded  it  up,  and  tossed  it  upon  the  deck 
of  Captain  Nelson's  departing  ship.  But  though  he  may 
have  had  no  expectation  of  doing  such  a  thing,  he  wrote  a 
book  that  is  not  unworthy  to  be  the  beginning  of  the  new 
English  literature  in  America.  It  has  faults  enough,  with- 
out doubt.  Had  it  not  these,  it  would  have  been  too  good 
for  the  place  it  occupies.  The  composition  was  extem- 
poraneous ;  there  appears  in  it  some  chronic  misunder- 
standing between  the  nominatives  and  their  verbs ;  now 
and  then  the  words  and  clauses  of  a  sentence  are  jumbled 
together  in  blinding  heaps  ;  but  in  spite  of  all  its  crudities, 
here  is  racy  English,  pure  English,  the  sinewy,  picturesque 
and  throbbing  diction  of  the  navigators  and  soldiers  of 
the  Elizabethan  time.  And  although  the  materials  of  this 
book  are  not  moulded  in  nice  proportion,  the  story  is  well 
told.  The  man  has  an  eye  and  a  hand  for  that  thing. 
He  sees  the  essential  facts  of  a  situation,  and  throws  the 
rest  away;  and  the  business  moves  straight  forward. 

IV. 

About  three  months  after  the  departure  for  England  of 
the  ship  which  carried  to  the  printing-press  the  book  of 
which  an  extended  account  has  just  been  given,  there 
arrived  from  England  another  ship,  bringing  a  new  supply 
of  colonists,  and  bringing  likewise  a  letter  of  fantastic  in- 
structions and  of  querulous  complaints  from  the  London 
stockholders  of  the  company.  It  fell  to  Captain  John 
Smith,  as  the  new  president  of  the  colony,  to  make  reply 
to  this  document ;  and  he  did  it  in  the  production  which 
forms  the  second  title  in  our  list  of  his  American  writings. 
This  production  is  brief ;  but  it  is  a  most  vigorous,  trench- 
ant, and  characteristic  piece  of  writing,  a  transcript  of 
the  intense  spirit  of  the  man  who  wrote  it,  all  ablaze  with 
the  light  it  casts  into  that  primal  hot-bed  of  wrangling, 
indolence,  and  misery,  the  village  of  Jamestown.  Let  us 


28  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

reproduce  some  parts  of  this  letter,  the  sentences  of  which 
seem  to  fly  as  straight  and  hard  as  bullets : — "  I  received 
your  letter  wherein  you  write  that  our  minds  are  so  set 
upon  faction  and  idle  conceits  in  dividing  the  country 
without  your  consents  ;  and  that  we  feed  you  but  with  if's 
and  and's,  hopes,  and  some  few  proofs,  as  if  we  would  keep 
the  mystery  of  the  business  to  ourselves  ;  and  that  we  must 
expressly  follow  your  instructions  sent  by  Captain  New- 
port, the  charge  of  whose  voyage  amounts  to  near  two 
thousand  pounds, — the  which  if  we  cannot  defray  by  the 
ship's  return,  we  are  alike  to  remain  as  banished  men.  To 
these  particulars,  I  humbly  entreat  your  pardons  if  I  offend 
you  with  my  rude  answer.  For  our  factions,  ...  I  can- 
not prevent  them.  .  .  .  For  the  idle  letter  sent  to  my 
Lord  of  Salisbury  by  the  president  and  his  confederates 
for  dividing  the  country  and  so  forth,  what  it  was  I  know 
not ;  for  you  saw  no  hand  of  mine  to  it,  nor  ever  dreamt  I 
of  any  such  matter.  That  we  feed  you  with  hopes  and  so 
forth,  though  I  be  no  scholar,  I  am  past  a  school-boy ;  and 
I  desire  but  to  know  what  either  you  and  these  here  do 
know,  but  that  I  have  learned  to  tell  you  by  the  continual 
hazard  of  my  life.  I  have  not  concealed  from  you  anything 
I  know.  .  .  .  Expressly  to  follow  your  instructions  by 
Captain  Newport,  though  they  be  performed,  I  was  directly 
against  it ;  but  ...  I  was  content  to  be  overruled  by 
the  major  part  of  the  council,  I  fear  to  the  hazard  of  us 
all ;  which  now  is  generally  confessed,  when  it  is  too  late. 
•  .  .  For  the  charge  of  this  voyage  of  two  or  three 
thousand  pounds,  we  have  not  received  the  value  of  an 
hundred  pounds.  .  .  .  From  your  ship  we  had  not  pro- 
vision in  victuals  worth  twenty  pound  ;  and  we  are  more 
than  two  hundred  to  live  upon  this,— the  one  half  sick,  the 
other  little  better.  For  the  sailors,  I  confess  they  daily 
make  good  cheer ;  but  our  diet  is  a  little  meal  and  water, 
and  not  sufficient  of  that.  Though  there  be  fish  in  the  sea, 
fowls  in  the  air,  and  beasts  in  the  woods,  their  bounds  are 
so  large,  they  so  wild,  and  we  so  weak  and  ignorant,  we 


THE  FIRST  WRITER.  2$ 

cannot  much  trouble  them.  .  .  .  Captain  Ratcliffe  is 
now  called  Sicklemore.  ...  I  have  sent  you  him  home, 
lest  the  company  should  cut  his  throat.  .  .  .  When  you 
send  again,  I  entreat  you  rather  send  but  thirty  carpenters, 
husbandmen,  gardeners,  fishermen,  blacksmiths,  masons, 
and  diggers  up  of  trees'  roots,  well  provided,  than  a  thousand 
of  such  as  we  have  ;  for  except  we  be  able  both  to  lodge  them 
and  feed  them,  the  most  will  consume  with  want  of  neces- 
saries, before  they  can  be  made  good  for  anything.  .  .  . 
These  arc  the  causes  that  have  kept  us  in  Virginia  from 
laying  such  a  foundation  that  ere  this  might  have  given 
much  better  content  and  satisfaction  ;  but  as  yet  you  must 
not  look  for  any  profitable  returns.  So  I  humbly  rest." ' 

Such  are  the  principal  portions  of  Captain  John  Smith's 
letter  of  explanation  to  the  London  proprietors  of  the 
company  whose  affairs  in  Virginia  he  was  just  then  con- 
ducting.  Certainly  this  writing  is  racy,  terse,  fearless  ;  a 
style  of  sentence  carved  out  by  a  sword  ;  the  incisive 
speech  of  a  man  of  action  ;  Hotspur  rhetoric,  jerking  with 
impatience,  truculcncc,  and  noble  wrath.  And  it  is  not 
without  an  under-meaning  in  many  ways  that  this  produc- 
tion, among  the  very  earliest  in  American  literature,  should 
communicate  to  England  a  foretaste  of  what  proved  to  be 
the  incurable  American  habit  of  talking  back  to  her.  From 
the  beginning,  it  was  hard  for  England  to  see  the  just 
limits  of  her  interference  with  her  own  colonial  children 
in  America ;  and  though  three  thousand  miles  away  from 
them,  she  could  not  stay  her  motherly  tongue  from  advis- 
ing and  commanding  them  concerning  the  details  of  their 
life  in  the  wilderness  about  which  they  inevitably  knew 
more  than  she  did.  One  can  easily  imagine  what  a  shock 
this  epistolary  retort  of  Captain  John  Smith  must  have 
given  to  the  dignified  nerves  of  those  kindly  and  lordly 
patrons  in  London ;  how  its  saucy  sentences  must  have 
made  them  gasp  and  stare.  Almost  the  earliest  note, 

1  Printed  in  Capt.  J.  Smith'*  "  Gen.  Hist."  I.  200-203. 


3o  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITER  A  TURE. 

then,  of  American  literature  is  a  note  of  unsubmissiveness. 
Captain  John  Smith's  letter,  in  the  first  decade  of  the 
seventeenth  century,  is  a  premonitory  symptom  of  the 
Declaration  of  Independence. 

V. 

In  the  same  parcel  with  this  remarkable  letter  of  Cap- 
tain  Smith's  was  enclosed  by  him  to  the  adventurers  in 
London  another  document — a  proof  of  his  irrepressible 
activity  and  of  his  versatile  talent — a  "  Map  of  the  Bay 
and  the  Rivers,  with  an  annexed  Relation  of  the  countries, 
and  nations  that  inhabit  them."  '  This  document  did  not 
get  into  print  until  1612,  when  it  was  published  at  Oxford, 
and  constitutes  the  third  work  in  the  list  of  the  author's 
American  writings.  It  deals  with  the  climate  and  topog- 
raphy of  Virginia,  with  its  fauna  and  flora,  and  particu- 
larly with  the  characteristics  of  its  earlier  inhabitants,  the 
Indians.  As  a  whole  the  work  is  uncommonly  picturesque 
and  even  amusing  ;  for  though  devoted  to  climatic  and 
topographic  descriptions,  to  matters  of  natural  history,  and 
to  the  coarse  features  of  savage  existence,  the  genius  of 
the  writer  quickens  and  brightens  it  all,  strewing  his  pages 
with  easy  and  delightful  strokes  of  imagery,  quaint  humor, 
shrewdness,  and  a  sort  of  rough  unconscious  grace.  His 
introductory  chapter  is  full  of  the  joy  which  the  first  vis- 
itors to  this  country  felt  in  the  sweet  air,  the  rich  soil,  the 
waters,  the  mountains,  in  all  the  large  and  majestic  frame- 
-/work  of  nature  in  the  new  world  :  "The  temperature  of 
this  country  doth  agree  well  with  English  constitutions. 
.  .  .  The  summer  is  hot  as  in  Spain  ;  the  winter  cold 
as  in  France  or  England.  ...  The  winds  here  are 
variable ;  but  the  like  thunder  and  lightning  to  purify  the 
air,  I  have  seldom  either  seen  or  heard  in  Europe.  .  .  . 
There  is  but  one  entrance  by  sea  into  this  country,  and 


1  Reprinted  with  some  alterations  of  text  in  Capt.  J    Smith's  "  G«n    Hist 
I.  113-148. 


THE  FIRST  WRITER.  3 1 

that  is  at  the  mouth  of  a  very  goodly  bay,  eighteen  or 
twenty  miles  broad.  .  .  .  Within  is  a  country  that  may 
have  the  prerogative  over  the  most  pleasant  places  known, 
for  large  and  pleasant  navigable  rivers.  .  .  .  Here  are 
mountains,  hills,  plains,  valleys,  rivers  and  brooks  all  run- 
ning most  pleasantly  into  a  fair  bay,  compassed,  but  for 
the  mouth,  with  fruitful  and  delightsome  land.  In  the 
bay  and  rivers  are  many  isles,  both  great  and  small.  .  .  . 
The  mountains  are  of  divers  natures;  for  at  the  head  of 
the  bay  the  rocks  are  of  a  composition  like  mill-stones, 
some  of  marble  and  so  forth.  And  many  pieces  like  crys- 
tal we  found,  as  thrown  down  by  water  from  those  moun- 
tains. .  .  .  These  waters  wash  from  the  rocks  such 
glistering  tinctures  that  the  ground  in  some  places  seemeth 
as  gilded ;  where  both  the  rocks  and  the  earth  arc  so  splen- 
dent to  behold  that  better  judgments  than  ours  might  have 
been  persuaded  they  contained  more  than  probabilities. 
The  vesture  of  the  earth  in  most  places  doth  manifestly 
prove  the  nature  of  the  soil  to  be  lusty  and  very  rich."  * 

This  charming  passage,  pregnant  with  adroit  hints,  must 
have  proved  very  seductive  when  it  came  to  be  read  in 
England  ;  it  must  have  made  many  an  eye  sparkle  with 
the  expectation  of  golden  returns  from  this  mysterious 
new  realm  of  theirs,  all  bulging  and  variegated  with  pre- 
cious metals  and  precious  stones.  And  the  passage  just 
quoted  contains,  likewise,  not  a  few  of  the  best  traits  of 
the  author's  descriptive  manner,  which  is  vital  with  the 
breath  of  imagination,  and  tinted  with  the  very  hues  of  na- 
ture. One  has  not  to  go  far  along  the  sentences  elsewhere 
in  this  book  without  finding  all  the  dull  and  hard  details  of 
his  subject  made  delightful  by  felicities  of  phrase  that  seem 
to  spring  up  as  easily  as  wild  flowers  in  the  woods  of  his 
own  Virginia.  vHe  speaks  of  "  an  infinite  number  of  small 
rundels  and  pleasant  springs  that  disperse  themselves 
for  the  best  service  as  do  the  veins  of  a  man's  body;  "* 

1  From  the  reprint  in  Capt.  J.  Smith1.  "  Gen.  Hut."  I.  113-115 
1  Ibid.  I.  116. 


o2  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

of  "  a  bay  wherein  falleth  three  or  four  pretty  brooks  and 
creeks  that  half  intrench  the  inhabitants  of  Warrasko- 
yac  ; " l  of  the  river  Pamaunkee  that  "  divideth  itself  into 
two  gallant  branches;"2  of  the  river  Patawomeke  "fed 
.  with  many  sweet  rivers  and  springs  which  fall 
from  the  bordering  hills."3  There  is  often  a  quaint 
flavor  in  his  words — that  racy  and  piquant  simplicity  which 
so  much  charms  us  in  the  English  descriptive  prose  of  the 
sixteenth  century,  and  the  first  third  of  the  seventeenth. 
He  speaks  of  a  plum  called  Putchamins,  which  when  unripe 
"will  draw  a  man's  mouth  awry  with  much  torment;"4 
of  the  Indian  men  of  Virginia  who  "  wear  half  their  beards 
shaven,  the  other  half  long;  for  barbers  they  use  their 
women,  who  with  two  shells  will  grate  away  the  hair  of 
any  fashion  they  please."  5  "'Referring  to  the  personal  or- 
naments of  the  Indians,  he  mentions  that  "  in  each  ear 
commonly  they  have  three  great  holes,  whereat  they  hang 
chains,  bracelets,  or  copper.  Some  of  their  men  wear  in 
those  holes  a  small  green  and  yellow  colored  snake,  near 
half  a  yard  in  length,  which  crawling  and  lapping  herself 
about  his  neck  oftentimes  familiarly  would  kiss  his  lips. 
Others  wear  a  dead  rat  tied  by  the  tail."  6  "  The  men  be- 
stow their  times  in  fishing,  hunting,  wars,  and  such  man- 
like exercises,  scorning  to  be  seen  in  any  woman-like 
exercise,  which  is  the  cause  that  the  women  be  very  pain- 
ful, and  the  men  often  idle."7  He  says  that  "for  their 
music  they  use  a  thick  cane,  on  which  they  pipe  as  on  a 
recorder.  .  .  .  But  their  chief  instruments  are  rattles 
made  of  small  gourds  or  pumpions'  shells.  .  .  .  These 
mingled  with  their  voices  sometimes  twenty  or  thirty  to- 
gether, make  such  a  terrible  noise  as  would  rather  affright 
than  delight  any  man."8  He  describes  their  orators  as 
making  speeches  of  welcome  to  a  public  guest,  "  testifying 
their  love  .  .  .  with  such  vehemency,  and  so  great 

1  Capt.  J.  Smith's  "Gen.  Hist."  I.  116.  »  Ibid.  I.  117. 

8  Ibid.  I.  118.  «  ibid.  I.  122.  •  Ibid.  I.  129. 

6  Ibid.  I.  130.  '  Ibid.  I.  131.  •  Ibid.  I.  136. 


THE  FIRST  WRITER. 


33 


passions  that  they  sweat  till  they  drop,  and  are  so  out 
of  breath  that  they  can  scarce  speak;  so  that  a  man 
would  take  them  to  be  exceeding  angry  or  stark  mad." l 
He  tells  of  a  certain  Indian  king  who  "did  believe  that 
our  God  as  much  exceeded  theirs  as  our  guns  did  their 
bows  and  arrows  ;  and  many  times  did  send  to  me  to 
Jamestown,  entreating  me  to  pray  to  my  God  for  rain,  for 
their  gods  would  not  send  them  any."*  Remembering 
those  tender-fingered  drones  calling  themselves  "gentle- 
men "  who  constituted  so  large  and  so  useless  a  portion  of 
the  first  colonists  in  Virginia,  one  cannot  help  relishing 
the  frequent  sarcasms  with  which  this  impetuous  and 
indomitable  man  spices  his  references  to  them  ;  in  one 
place  characterizing  them  as  persons  who  never  ••  did  any- 
thing but  devour  the  fruits  of  other  men's  labor ;  "  and 
who,  "because  they  found  not  English  cities,  nor  such 
fair  houses,  nor  at  their  own  wishes  any  of  their  accus- 
tomed dainties,  with  feather  beds  and  down  pillows,  tav- 
erns and  alehouses  in  every  breathing  place,  neither  such 
plenty  of  gold  and  silver  and  dissolute  liberty  as  they  ex- 
pected, had  little  or  no  care  of  anything  but  to  pamper 
their  bellies,  to  fly  away  with  our  pinnaces,  or  procure 
their  means  to  return  for  England  ;  for  the  country  was  to 
them  a  misery,  a  ruin,  a  death,  a  hell."' 

There  are  in  this  book  some  specimens  of  portrait-paint- 
ing that  show  no  slight  power.  Let  us  take,  for  example, 
his  description  of  the  appearance  and  state  of  the  famous 
Indian  king,  Powhatan :  "  He  is  of  personage  a  tall  well- 
proportioned  man,  with  a  sour  look,  his  head  somewhat 
gray,  his  beard  so  thin  that  it  seemeth  none  at  all,  his  age 
near  sixty ;  of  a  very  able  and  hardy  body  to  endure  any 
labor.  About  his  person  ordinarily  attendeth  a  guard  of 
forty  or  fifty  of  the  tallest  men  his  country  doth  afford. 
Every  night  upon  the  four  quarters  of  his  house  are  four 
sentinels,  each  from  other  a  slight  shoot,  and  at  every  half 

1  Capt.  J.  Smith's  "  Gen.  Hut."  I.  136,  137. 
•  Ibid.  I.  141.  •  Ibid.  I.  145. 

3 


34  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITER  A  TURE. 

hour  one  from  the  corps  de  garde  doth  halloo,  shaking  his 
lips  with  his  finger  between  them  ;  unto  whom  every  sen- 
tinel  doth  answer  round  from  his  stand.  If  any  fail,  they 
presently  send  forth  an  officer  that  beateth  him  extreme- 
ly."  1  Here,  likewise,  is  some  effective  description  in  his 
account  of  the  Susquehanna  Indians,  whom  he  encoun- 
tered on  one  of  his  tours  of  discovery,  and  whose  huge 
shapes  and  strange  costumes  appear  to  have  impressed  him 
greatly:  "  But  to  proceed,  sixty  of  those  Susquehannocks 
came  to  us  with  skins,  bows,  arrows,  targets,  beads,  swords, 
and  tobacco  pipes  for  presents.  Such  great  and  well  pro- 
portioned men  are  seldom  seen  ;  for  they  seemed  like 
giants  to  the  English,  yea  and  to  the  neighbors,  yet 
seemed  of  an  honest  and  simple  disposition,  with  much 
ado  restrained  from  adoring  us  as  gods.  Those  are  the 
strangest  people  of  all  those  countries,  both  in  language 
and  attire.  For  their  language,  it  may  well  beseem  their 
proportions,  sounding  from  them  as  a  voice  in  a  vault. 
Their  attire  is  the  skins  of  bears  and  wolves.  .  .  .  One 
had  the  head  of  a  wolf  hanging  in  a  chain  for  a  jewel,  his 
tobacco  pipe  three  quarters  of  a  yard  long  .  .  .  suf- 
ficient to  beat  out  one's  brains ;  with  bows,  arrows,  and 
clubs  suitable  to  their  greatness.  .  .  .  The  picture  of 
the  greatest  of  them  is  signified  in  the  map  ;  the  calf  of 
whose  leg  was  three  quarters  of  a  yard  about,  and  all  the 
rest  of  his  limbs  so  answerable  to  that  proportion  that  he 
seemed  the  goodliest  man  we  ever  saw."  2 

Near  the  end  of  this  little  book  occurs  one  sentence  in 
which  the  author  has  admirably  compacted  a  statement  of 
all  the  nobler  utilities  of  the  young  colony  of  Virginia  : 
"  So,  then,  here  is  a  place,  a  nurse  for  soldiers,  a  practice 
for  mariners,  a  trade  for  merchants,  a  reward  for  the  good  ; 
and  that  which  is  most  of  all,  a  business,  most  acceptable 
to  God,  to  bring  such  poor  infidels  to  the  knowledge  of 
God  and  his  holy  gospel."  8 


1  Capt.  J.  Smith's  "  Gen.  Hist."  I.  142,  143. 

2  Ibid.  I.  119,  120.  'Ibid.  I.  128. 


THE  FIRST  WRITER.  35 

We  may  be  well  content  to  let  this  strong  and  beautiful 
sentence  linger  in  our  memories  as  the  last  one  we  shall 
draw  from  Captain  John  Smith's  American  writings,  and 
as  an  honorable  token  of  his  broad  and  clear  grasp  of  the 
meaning  of  that  great  national  impulse  which  stirred  the 
heart  of  England  in  his  time,  for  the  founding  of  a  new 
English  empire  in  America. 

VI. 

The  book  which  we  have  just  inspected  is  the  third  work 
written  by  Captain  John  Smith  in  America;  and  as  stu- 
dents of  American  literature,  we  must  here  end  our  study 
of  his  writings.  He  remained  in  Virginia  about  twelve 
months  after  the  time  to  which  the  latest  of  these  writings 
refers,  returning  to  England  in  the  fall  of  1609.  It  is  not 
improbable  that  he  was  recalled  to  England  by  the  dis- 
pleasure of  the  London  proprietors  of  the  Virginia  com- 
pany. Dropped  from  their  service,  he  remained  in  Eng- 
land until  1614,  when  with  two  ships  he  made  a  voyage  of 
trade  and  exploration  to  New  England,  and  came  back 
the  same  year  with  a  map,  drawn  by  himself,  of  the  country 
between  the  Pcnobscot  and  Cape  Cod.  In  the  year  1615 
he  sailed  again  for  New  England,  taking  with  him  a  colony 
for  settlement  there ;  but  on  the  voyage  out  he  was  cap- 
tured by  a  French  pirate  and  carried  prisoner  to  Rochclle, 
whence  he  soon  escaped  and  made  his  way  back  to  Eng- 
land. From  that  time  until  his  death  in  1631  he  probably 
never  left  England  again.  His  career  of  daring  adventure 
was  over.  Though  he  continued  to  take  the  most  pas- 
sionate interest  in  American  colonization,  and  to  agitate  and 
plot  and  strive  for  it,  he  had  to  appease  his  restless  spirit 
with  the  tame  joys  of  authorship.  He  appears  to  have 
been  looked  upon  henceforward  as  the  veteran  explorer, 
and  to  have  been  consulted  and  quoted  as  an  authority  in 
the  practical  details  of  colonization.  The  marvellous  tales 
of  his  exploits  which  he  told  in  his  books  furnished  wel- 
come materials  for  Ben  Jonson  and  other  playwrights;  so 


36  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITER  A  TURE. 

that  he  himself  said,  half  in  pride,  half  in  complaint,  "  they 
have  acted  my  fatal  tragedies  upon  the  stage  and  racked 
my  relations  at  their  pleasure."  *  Even  then  there  were 
not  wanting  those  who  suspected  the  fidelity  of  his  narra- 
tives, and  who  accused  him  of  adorning  his  heroic  anec- 
dotes with  exploits  which  he  had  wrought  only  in  imagi- 
nation. "  Envy  hath  taxed  me,"  he  says,  "  to  have  writ 
too  much  and  done  too  little."  2  Thomas  Fuller,  in  his 
"Worthies  of  England,"8  first  published  thirty-one  years 
after  Captain  Smith's  death,  gives  perhaps  the  cool  after- 
thought of  many  of  the  Captain's  contemporaries,  in  these 
contemptuous  and  delicately  cutting  words :  "  From  the 
Turks  in  Europe  he  passed  to  the  pagans  in  America, 
where  .  .  .  such  his  perils,  preservations,  dangers,  de- 
liverances, they  seem  to  most  men  above  belief,  to  some 
beyond  truth.  Yet  have  we  two  witnesses  to  attest  them, 
the  prose  and  the  pictures,  both  in  his  own  book ;  and  it 
soundeth  much  to  the  diminution  of  his  deeds,  that  he 
alone  is  the  herald  to  publish  and  proclaim  them."  Proba- 
bly it  was  this  base  incredulity  of  his  contemporaries,  this 
hard  historical  Sadduceeism,  that  Captain  Smith  and  his 
immediate  champions  meant  to  designate  by  the  words 
"  envy,"  and  "  detraction,"  which  meet  us  in  their  allusions 
to  the  reception  then  given  to  his  writings.  A  namesake 
of  the  author,  one  N.  Smith,  thus  bravely  steps  forward  as 
his  defender: 

"Sith  thou,  the  man  deserving  of  these  ages, 

Much  pain  hast  ta'en  for  this  our  kingdom's  good, 

In  climes  unknown,  'mongst  Turke's  and  salvages, 
T  enlarge  our  bounds,  though  with  thy  loss  of  blood, 

Hence  damn'd  Detraction — stand  not  in  our  way  ! 

Envy  itself  will  not  the  truth  gainsay."4 

It  is  quite  plain  that  while  the  weak  spot   in  Captain 
Smith's  character,  his  love  of  telling  large  stories,  was  sus- 

1  '«  Epistle  Dedicatory"  in  " True  Travels."  •  Ibid. 

«  Edition  of  1840,  I.  275,  276.          « Capt.  J.  Smith's  "  Gen.  Hist."  I.  246 


THE  FIRST  WRITER.  37 

pected  by  many  of  his  contemporaries,  he  nevertheless 
had  among  the  best  of  them  stanch  and  admiring  friends. 
Sir  Robert  Cotton,  the  Earls  of  Pembroke,  of  Lindsay,  and 
of  Dover,  the  Duchess  of  Lenox,  and  Lord  Hunsdon,  were 
those  in  the  upper  spheres  of  society  whom  he  could  pub- 
licly  name  as  his  patrons  and  friends.  Among  the  writers 
of  commendatory  verses  prefixed  and  affixed  to  his  books, 
are  such  eminent  persons  as  Samuel  Purchas,  George 
Wither,  and  John  Donne ;  and  nearly  all  of  these  writers, 
whether  now  famous  or  obscure,  apply  to  him  terms  of 
homage  and  endearment.  Donne  calls  him  "  brave 
Smith  ;  "  Richard  James  calls  him  "  dear  noble  Captain  ;  " 
Ed.  Jordan  exclaims: 

"  Good  men  will  yield  thee  praise  ;  then  slight  the  rest  ; 
Tis  best,  praise-worthy,  to  have  pleased  the  best  ;"' 

while  an  anonymous  writer,  after  reciting  the  names  of  the 
great  explorers,  Columbus,  Cabot,  Frobisher,  Humphrey 
Gilbert,  Drake,  Gosnold,  and  others,  says : 

"  Though  these  be  gone  and  left  behind  a  name, 

Yet  Smith  is  here  to  anvil  out  a  piece 
To  after  ages  and  eternal  fame. 

That  we  may  have  the  golden  Jason's  fleece. 
He,  Vulcan-like,  did  forge  a  true  plantation, 

And  chained  their  kings  to  his  immortal  glory. 
Restoring  peace  and  plenty  to  the  nation, 

Regaining  honor  to  this  worthy  story."  * 

After  all  the  abatements  which  a  fair  criticism  must 
make  from  the  praise  of  Captain  John  Smith  either  as  a 
doer  or  as  a  narrator,  his  writings  still  make  upon  us  the 
impression  of  a  certain  personal  largeness  in  him,  magna- 
nimity, affluence,  sense,  and  executive  force.  Over  all  his 
personal  associates  in  American  adventure  he  seems  to 
tower,  by  the  natural  loftiness  and  reach  of  the  perception 
with  which  he  grasped  the  significance  of  their  vast  enter- 

'  In  C»pt.  J.  Smith's  "  Gen.  Hist."  *  Ibid.  61. 


g  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

prise  and  the  means  to  its  success.  As  a  writer  his  merits 
L  really  great-clearness,  force,  vividness,  picturesque  and 
dramatic  energy,  a  diction  racy  and  crisp.  He  had 
tults  of  an  impulsive,  irascible,  egotistic,  and  ^aginative 
nature ;  he  sometimes  bought  human  Pra1Se  at  too  high  a 
price-  but  he  had  great  abilities  in  word  and  deed;  his 
nature  was  upon  the  whole  generous  and  noble;  and  dur- 
ing the  first  two  decades  of  the  seventeenth  century  he 
did  more  than  any  other  Englishman  to  make  an  American 
nation  and  an  American  literature  possible. 


CHAPTER  III. 
VIRGINIA:  OTHER  EARLY  WRITERS. 

I — Georg*  Percy  of  Northumberland— His  worthiness  -  His  graphic  sketches 
of  the  brightness  and  gloom  of  their  first  year  in  America. 

II. — William  Strachcy — His  terrible  voyage  and  wreck  with  Sir  Thomas 
Gates — His  book  descriptive  of  it  and  of  the  state  of  the  colony  in  Vir- 
ginia— Some  germs  of  Shakespeare  s  Tempest — Strachey's  wonderful  pic- 
ture of  a  storm  at  *ea. 

III.— Alexander  Whitaker.  the  devoted  Christian  missionary— His  life  and 
death  and  memory  in  Virginia — Hi*  appeal  to  England  in  "  Good  News 
from  Virginia." 

IV.— John  Pory  -His  coming  to  Virginia — His  previous  career— A  cos- 
mopolite  in  a  colony — His  return  to  England — His  amusing  sketches  of 
Indian  character — The  humors  and  consolations  of  pioneer  life  along  the 
James  River. 

V. — George  Sandys — His  high  jxrrson.il  qualities  and  his  fine  genius — His 
literary  services  before  coming  to  America— Michael  Pray  ton's  exhorta- 
tion to  entice  the  Muses  to  Virginia — Sandys's  fidelity  lo  his  literary  voca- 
tion amid  calamity  and  fatigue — His  translation  of  Ovid — Its  relation  to 
poetry  and  scholarship  in  the  new  world — Passages  from  it — The  story  of 
Philomela — His  poetic  renown. 

I. 

IN  that  little  colony  of  earliest  Americans,  seated  at 
Jamestown,  and  for  more  than  twenty  years  struggling 
against  almost  every  menace  of  destruction  from  without 
and  within,  were  several  other  writers  who  have  some 
claim  to  our  notice.  One  of  these  Nwas  George  Percy. 
Every  slight  glimpse  we  get  of  him  throxjgh  the  chinks  of 
contemporary  reference  tends  to  convince  us  ttiat  the  un- 
common respect  in  which  he  was  held  by  his  associates 
was  rendered  to  him  quite  as  much  because  he  was  a  mod- 
est, brave,  and  honorable  man,  as  because  he  was  a  brother 

39 


40  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

of  the  great  Earl  of  Northumberland.  He  composed  a 
"  Discourse  of  the  Plantations  of  the  Southern  Colony  in 
Virginia  by  the  English,"  of  which,  however,  only  a  frag- 
ment is  preserved— the  fragment  occupying  six  folio  pages 
in  Purchas's  "  Pilgrims."  The  portion  of  his  book  thus 
preserved  relates  the  history  of  the  colony  from  its  de- 
parture out  of  England  down  to  September,  1607;  and  is 
written  in  that  style  of  idiomatic  and  nervous  English 
prose  which  seems  to  have  been  the  birthright  of  so  many 
active  Englishmen  in  the  Elizabethan  age.  His  descrip- 
tions of  the  beauty  and  fertility  of  Virginia  as  it  appeared 
to  the  sea-sad  eyes  of  the  colonists  'n  that  happy  month 
of  their  arrival,  throw  by  contrast  a  deeper  gloom  upon 
the  picture  which  he  soon  has  to  paint  of  the  miseries  be- 
setting their  first  summer  in  Virginia — a  summer  which 
dragged  over  them  slowly  its  horrible  trail  of  homesickness, 
discord,  starvation,  pestilence,  and  Indian  hostility.  "  Our 
men  were  destroyed  with  cruel  diseases,  as  swellings,  flixes, 
burning  fevers,  and  by  wars ;  and  some  departed  suddenly. 
But  for  the  most  part  they  died  of  mere  famine.  There 
were  never  Englishmen  left  in  a  foreign  country  in  such 
misery  as  we  were,  in  this  new  discovered  Virginia.  We 
watched  every  three  nights  lying  on  the  bare  cold  ground, 
what  weather  soever  came ;  warded  all  the  next  day 
which  brought  our  men  to  be  most  feeble  wretches.  Our 
food  was  but  a  small  can  of  barley  sod  in  water  to  five 
men  a  day  ;  our  drink  cold  water  taken  out  of  the  river, 
which  was  at  a  flood  very  salt,  at  a  low  tide  full  of  slime 
and  filth,  which  was  the  destruction  of  many  of  our  men. 
Thus  we  lived  for  the  space  of  five  months  in  this  misera- 
ble distress,  not  having  five  able  men  to  man  our  bulwarks 
upon  any  occasion.  If  it  had  not  pleased  God  to  put  a 
terror  in  the  savages'  hearts,  we  had  all  perished  by  those 
wild  and  cruel  pagans,  being  in  that  weak  estate  as  we 
were ;  our  men  night  and  day  groaning  in  every  corner  of 
the  fort  most  pitiful  to  hear.  If  there  were  any  conscience 
in  men,  it  would  make  their  hearts  to  bleed  to  hear  the 


WILLIAM  S  TRA  CHE  Y.  4, 

pitiful  murmurings  and  outcries  of  our  sick  men,  without 
relief  every  night  and  day  for  the  space  of  six  weeks  ; 
some  departing  out  of  the  world,  many  times  three  or  four 
in  a  night,  in  the  morning  their  bodies  trailed  out  of  their 
cabins  like  dogs  to  be  buried." l 

II. 

During  the  first  decade  of  American  literature  a  little 
book  was  written  in  Virginia,  which,  as  is  believed  by  some 
authors,  soon  rendered  an  illustrious  service  to  English 
literature  by  suggesting  to  Shakespeare  the  idea  of  one  of 
his  noblest  masterpieces,  "The  Tempest."  It  was  in  May 
of  the  year  1610  that  sixty  tattered  and  forlorn  colonists — 
the  last  remnants  of  five  hundred  who  were  alive  there  six 
months  before — crawled  out  from  the  block-house  at  James- 
town, and  moved  toward  the  river-bank  to  greet  with  a 
sickly  welcome  the  unexpected  arrival  of  Sir  Thomas 
Gates.  This  brave  commander  with  two  small  vessels  and 
a  hundred  and  fifty  companions,  had  at  last  found  his  way 
into  the  James  River  after  a  voyage  of  almost  incredible 
difficulty  and  peril.  Just  eleven  months  before,  he  had 
set  sail  from  England  for  Virginia,  with  a  fleet  of  nine 
ships  and  in  charge  of  five  hundred  emigrants.  On  their 
passage,  when  they  had  been  seven  weeks  at  sea  and  were 
drawing  near  to  the  Virginia  coast,  they  encountered  a 
frightful  tempest  in  which  the  fleet  was  scattered  ;  and  the 
admiral's  ship,  the  Sea-Adventure,  containing  Sir  Thomas 

1  Purchas,  IV.  1690.  Among  the  manuscripts  of  the  English  State  Paper 
Office  are  three  anonymous  tracts  relating  to  the  same  period  as  that  covered 
by  the  American  writings  of  Captain  John  Smith  and  of  George  Percy. 
These  tracts  were  evidently  written  by  one  of  their  companions.  They  are 
the  rough  jottings  of  an  inexpert  diarist,  and  are  too  crude  in  expression  to 
attract  us  on  account  of  any  literary  merit.  From  copies  made  for  George 
Bancroft,  the  American  Antiquarian  Society  printed  them  in  Vol.  IV.  of  its 
Transactions.  They  were  edited  by  Edward  Everett  Hale.  They  do  con- 
tain one  rather  graphic  and  amusing  passage,  a  description  of  the  sturdy  In- 
dian Queen  Apumatec, 


42  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

Gates,  Sir  George  Somers,  and  other  distinguished  and  un- 
distinguished company,  was  driven  ashore  upon  one  of  the 
Bermudas.  Not  being  heard  from  for  many  months,  that 
ship  with  all  on  board  was  given  up  for  lost.  Indeed  the 
ship  itself  was  lost,  battered  to  pieces  upon  the  rocks  ;  but 
out  of  its  fragments  the  passengers  constructed  the  two 
clumsy  pinnaces  in  which,  as  just  related,  they  at  last  com- 
pleted their  voyage  to  Jamestown.  Among  those  who 
had  borne  a  part  in  this  ghastly  and  almost  miraculous 
expedition  was  William  Strachey,  of  whom  but  little  is 
known  except  what  is  revealed  in  his  own  writings.  He 
was  a  man  of  decided  literary  aptitude.  Soon  after  his 
arrival  here  he  was  made  secretary  of  Virginia,  and,  as  he 
tells  us,  he  "  held  it  a  service  of  duty  .  .  .  to  be  re- 
membrancer of  all  accidents,  occurrences,  and  undertak- 
ings"  J  connected  with  the  colony  during  the  time  of  his 
residence  in  it.  Accordingly  in  July,  1610,  when  he  had 
been  in  Virginia  less  than  three  months,  he  wrote  at 
Jamestown  and  sent  off  to  England  "  A  True  Repertory 
of  the  Wrack  and  Redemption  of  Sir  Thomas  Gates,  Kt., 
upon  and  from  the  islands  of  the  Bermudas  ;  his  coming 
to  Virginia ;  and  the  estate  of  that  colony  then  and  after 
/ under  the  government  of  the  Lord  La  Ware."*  Whoever 
reads  this  little  book  will  be  quite  ready  to  believe  that  it 
may  have  brought  suggestion  and  inspiration  even  to  the 
genius  of  William  Shakespeare.  It  is  a  book  of  marvellous 
power.  Its  account  of  Virginia  is  well  done  ;  but  its  most 
striking  merit  is  its  delineation  of  his  dreadful  sea-voyage, 
and  particularly  of  the  tempest  which,  after  the  terror  and 
anguish  of  a  thousand  deaths,  drove  them  upon  the  rocks 
of  the  Bermudas.  Here  his  style  becomes  magnificent; 
it  has  some  sentences  which  for  imaginative  and  pathetic 
beauty,  for  vivid  implications  of  appalling  danger  and  dis- 

^ Preface  to  "Laws,  Divine,  Moral,  and  Martial,"  in  Force,  Hist.  Tracts, 
*  Reprinted  in  Purchas,  IV.  1734  1758. 


WILLIA M  S TRA  CHE  Y.  43 

aster,  can  hardly  be  surpassed  in  the  whole  range  of  Eng- 
lish prose.  It  was  upon  St.  James's  day,  July  the  twenty, 
fourth,  1609,  "  the  clouds  gathering  thick  upon  us,  and  the 
winds  singing  and  whistling  most  unusually,"  that  "a 
dreadful  storm  and  hideous  began  to  blow  from  out  the 
north-cast,  which,  swelling  and  roaring  as  it  were  by  fits, 
some  hours  with  more  violence  than  others,  at  length  did 
beat  all  light  from  heaven,  which,  like  an  hell  of  darkness, 
turned  black  upon  us,  so  much  the  more  fuller  of  horror 
as  in  such  cases  horror  and  fear  use  to  overrun  the  trou. 
bled  and  overmastered  senses  of  all.  ...  For  surely, 
.  .  .  as  death  comes  not  so  sudden  nor  apparent,  so  he 
comes  not  so  elvish  and  painful  to  men  ...  as  at  sea. 
.  .  .  For  four  and  twenty  hours  the  storm,  in  a  restless 
tumult,  had  blown  so  exceedingly  as  we  could  not  appre- 
hend in  our  imaginations  any  possibility  of  greater  vio- 
lence ;  yet  did  we  still  find  it,  not  only  more  terrible  but 
more  constant,  fury  added  to  fury ;  and  one  storm,  urging 
a  second  more  outrageous  than  the  former  .  .  .  some- 
times strikes  in  our  ship  amongst  women  and  passengers 
not  used  to  such  hurly  and  discomforts,  made  us  look  one 
upon  the  other  with  troubled  hearts  and  panting  bosoms, 
our  clamors  drowned  in  the  winds,  and  the  winds  in  thun- 
der. Prayers  might  well  be  in  the  heart  and  lips,  but 
drowned  in  the  outcries  of  officers;  nothing  heard  that 
could  give  comfort,  nothing  seen  that  might  encourage 
hope.  It  is  impossible  for  me,  had  I  the  voice  of  Stentor, 
and  expression  of  as  many  tongues  as  his  throat  of  voices, 
to  express  the  outcries  and  miseries,  not  languishing,  but 
wasting  our  spirits.  .  .  .  Our  sails  wound  up  lay  with- 
out their  use ;  .  .  .  the  sea  swelled  above  the  clouds 
and  gave  battle  unto  heaven.  It  could  not  be  said  to  rain  : 
the  waters  like  whole  rivers  did  flood  in  the  air.  And  this 
I  did  still  observe  that,  whereas  upon  the  land,  when  a 
storm  hath  poured  itself  forth  once  in  drifts  of  rain,  the 
wind,  as  beaten  down  and  vanquished  therewith,  not  long 
after  endureth ;  here  the  glut  of  water  .  .  .  was  no 


44 


HISTORY  OF  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 


sooner  a  little  emptied  and  qualified,  but  instantly  the 
winds,  as  having  gotten  their  mouths  now  free  and  at  lib- 
erty, spake  more  loud,  and  grew  more  tumultuous  and 
malignant.  What  shall  I  say  ?  Winds  and  seas  were  as 
mad  as  fury  and  rage  could  make  them.  .  .  .  There 
was  not  a  moment  in  which  the  sudden  splitting  or  instant 
oversetting  of  the  ship  was  not  expected.  Howbeit,  this 
was  not  all.  *  It  pleased  God  to  bring  a  greater  affliction 
upon  us;  for  in  the  beginning  of  the  storm  we  had  re- 
ceived likewise  a  mighty  leak ;  and  the  ship,  in  every  joint 
almost  having  spewed  out  her  oakum,  .  .  .  was  grown 
five  foot  suddenly  deep  with  water  above  her  ballast,  and 
we  almost  drowned  within  whilst  we  sat  looking  when  to 
perish  from  above.  This,  imparting  no  less  terror  than 
danger,  ran  through  the  whole  ship  with  much  fright  and 
amazement,  startled  and  turned  the  blood,  and  took  down 
the  braves  of  the  most  hardy  mariner  of  them  all,  inso- 
much as  he  that  before  happily  felt  not  the  sorrow  of 
others,  now  began  to  sorrow  for  himself.  .  .  .  Once  so 
huge  a  sea  brake  .  .  .  upon  us,  as  it  covered  our  ship 
from  stern  to  stem,  like  a  garment  or  vast  cloud  ;  it  filled 
her  brimful  .  .  .  from  the  hatches  up  to  the  spar- 
deck.  .  .  .  During  all  this  time  the  heavens  looked  so 
black  upon  us  that  it  was  not  possible  the  elevation  of  the 
Pole  might  be  observed  ;  nor  a  star  by  night,  nor  sun-beam 
by  day,  was  to  be  seen.  Only  upon  the  Thursday  night, 
Sir  George  Somers  being  upon  the  watch,  had  an  appari- 
tion of  a  little  round  light,  like  a  faint  star,  trembling  and 
streaming  along  with  a  sparkling  blaze,  half  the  height  upon 
the  main  mast,  and  shooting  sometimes  from  shroud  to 
shroud,  tempting  to  settle  as  it  were  upon  any  of  the  four 
shrouds ;  and  for  three  or  four  hours  together,  or  rather 
more,  half  the  night,  it  kept  with  us,  running  sometimes 
along  the  main-yard  to  the  very  end  and  then  returning. 
...  But  it  did  not  light  us  any  whit  the  more  to  our 
known  way,  who  ran  now,  as  do  hoodwinked  men,  at  all 
adventures.  .  .  .  East  and  by  south  we  steered  away 


WILLIAM  STRACHEY. 


45 


as  much  as  we  could  to  bear  upright,  .  .  .  albeit  we 
much  unrigged  our  ship,  threw  overboard  much  luggage, 
many  a  trunk  and  chest,  .  .  .  and  staved  many  a  butt  of 
beer,  hogsheads  of  oil,  cider,  wine,  and  vinegar,  and  heaved 
away  all  our  ordnance  on  the  starboard  side,  and  had  now 
purposed  to  cut  down  the  main  mast.  .  .  .  For  we 
were  much  spent,  and  our  men  so  weary  as  their  strengths 
together  failed  them  with  their  hearts,  having  travailed 
now  from  Tuesday  till  Friday  morning,  day  and  night, 
without  either  sleep  or  food.  .  .  .  And  it  being  now 
Friday,  the  fourth  morning,  it  wanted  little  but  that 
there  had  been  a  general  determination  to  have  shut  up 
hatches,  and,  commending  our  sinful  souls  to  God,  com- 
mitted the  ship  to  the  mercy  of  the  sea.  .  .  .  But  see 
the  goodness  and  sweet  introduction  of  better  hope,  by 
our  merciful  God  given  unto  us.  Sir  George  Somers,  when 
no  man  had  dreamed  of  such  happiness,  had  discovered 
and  cried  land.  Indeed  the  morning,  now  three  quarters 
gone,  had  won  a  little  clearness  from  the  days  before  ;  and 
it  being  better  surveyed,  the  very  trees  were  seen  to  move 
with  the  wind  upon  the  shore-side.  ...  By  the  mercy 
of  God  unto  us,  making  out  our  boats,  we  had  ere  night 
brought  all  our  men,  women,  and  children  .  .  .  safe 
into  the  island.  We  found  it  to  be  the  dangerous  and 
dreaded  island,  or  rather  islands,  of  the  Bermudas.  .  .  . 
They  be  so  terrible  to  all  that  ever  touched  on  them,  and 
such  tempests,  thunders,  and  other  fearful  objects  are  seen 
and  heard  about  them,  that  they  be  called  commonly  the 
Devil's  Islands,  and  are  feared  and  avoided  of  all  travellers 
alive,  above  any  other  place  in  the  world  ;  ...  it  be- 
ing counted  of  most  that  they  can  be  no  habitation  for 
men,  but  rather  given  over  to  devils  and  wicked  spirits." 

III. 

At  the  very  time  when  William  Strachey,  in  some  rude 
cabin  near  the  banks  of  the  James  River,  was  writing  his 


46  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITER  A  TURE. 

most  eloquent  and  thrilling  book  about  Virginia  and  the 
awful  voyage  thither,  there  lived,  in  a  comfortable  parish 
in  the  north  of  England,  a  noble-minded  clergyman,  Alex- 
ander  Whitaker,  a  man  of  apostolic  zeal  for  the  gospel, 
and  of  apostolic  sorrow  for  all  men  who  were  still  beyond 
the  reach  of  the  gospel ;  a  man  to  whom  his  creed  was  so 
vivid  and  tremendous  a  fact  that  he  stood  ready  to  be  a 
missionary  for  it,  and  a  martyr,  even  at  the  world's  end. 
His  father  was  the  celebrated  divine,  William  Whitaker, 
master  of  Saint  John's  College,  Cambridge  ;  he  himself  had 
taken  his  degrees  at  that  university;  and  he  was  happily 
settled,  in  full  parochial  composure,  a  man  of  property, 
usefulness,  and  good  repute.  But  to  him,  such  appeals 
from  Virginia  as  those  of  William  Strachcy,  came  as  a 
wailing  cry  of  his  own  brethren  for  help, — all  the  more 
persuasive  for  the  fascinating  doom  of  danger  and  pain  for 
Christ's  sake,  to  which  those  appeals  invited  him.  Accord- 
ingly in  the  following  year,  1611,  in  the  company  of  Sir 
Thomas  Dale,  this  prosperous  priest  "  did  voluntarily  leave 
his  warm  nest,  and  to  the  wonder  of  his  kindred  and 
amazement  of  them  that  knew  him,  undertook  this  .  .  . 
heroical  resolution  to  go  to  Virginia,  and  help  to  bear  the 
name  of  God  unto  the  heathen." l  Thenceforward,  and 
for  more  than  three  years,  even  until  his  death  by  drown- 
ing sometime  before  the  year  1617,  Alexander  Whitaker 
lived  in  Virginia  a  brave  and  blameless  life,  a  true  mis- 
sionary for  Christ,— the  pure  and  beautiful  light  of  his 
message  going  with  him  everywhere,  across  plantation  and 
through  wilderness,  into  the  colonist's  hut  and  the  wig- 
wam of  the  savage ;  and  when  at  last  he  was  seen  no  more 
of  men,  the  tradition  of  him  lingered  there  as  a  hallowing 
influence,  and  his  name  still  lives  in  our  early  history  un- 
der the  tender  and  sacred  title  of  "  the  Apostle  of  Vir- 
ginia."2 After  he  had  been  in  America  two  years,  and 

1  Wm.  Crashawe,  in  "  Epistle  Dedicatory,"  prefixed  to  Whitaker's  "  Good 
News  from  Va."     London,  1613. 
s  F.  L.  Hawks,  "  Eccl.  Hist.  Va."  29. 


ALEXANDER   WHITAKER. 


47 


had  made  himself  master  of  his  subject,  he  put  his  experi- 
ence, and  his  benign  hopes,  and  his  passionate  sense  of 
Christian  duty,  into  a  book  which  furnishes  the  next  event 
to  be  mentioned  in  our  literary  annals,  "Good  News  from 
Virginia,"  published  in  London,  in  1613.  The  habits  of 
the  pulpit  clung  to  him  at  his  writing-table ;  and  the  book 
which  he  wrote  for  the  enlightenment  of  England  con- 
cerning Virginia,  has  the  form  and  tone  of  a  hortatory  ser- 
mon ;  a  "  pithy  and  godly  exhortation,"  as  old  Crashawe 
called  it,1  "  interlaced  with  narratives  of  many  particulars 
touching  the  country,  climate,  and  commodities."  He  pre- 
fixes to  it  a  biblical  text  ;  he  expounds  from  that  text  the 
Christian  doctrine  of  trying  to  do  good  to  others  even  by 
a  sacrifice  of  ourselves ;  and  he  points  out  the  great  oppor- 
tunity which  England  has  of  illustrating  this  doctrine  in 
the  case  of  her  forlorn  colony  in  the  new  world, — a  colony 
which  he  compares  "  to  the  growth  of  an  infant  which  hath 
been  afflicted  from  his  birth  with  some  grievous  sickness, 
that  many  times  no  hope  of  life  hath  remained,  and  yet  it 
livcth  still."1  In  presenting  to  the  mother-land  the  claims 
of  Virginia  upon  her  interest  and  pity,  he  gives  a  clear  and 
well-wrought  sketch  of  the  country,  the  climate,  and  the 
Indians,  expressing  himself  throughout  the  whole  book  in 
the  diction  of  an  earnest,  simple-minded,  scholarly  man, 
although  without  any  shining  superiorities  in  thought  or 
style.  His  own  heart  is  full  of  grief  for  the  Indians,  to 
whose  blighted  and  desolate  natures  he  would  bring  the 
comfort  of  heavenly  truth ;  and  he  sees  not  why  other 
Christian  Englishmen  should  not  feel  as  he  does:  "Let 
the  miserable  condition  of  these  naked  slaves  of  the  devil 
move  you  to  compassion  toward  them.  They  acknowledge 
that  there  is  a  great  God,  but  know  him  not;  .  .  . 
wherefore  they  serve  the  devil  for  fear,  after  a  most  base 
manner.  .  .  .  They  live  naked  in  body,  as  if  the  shame 
of  their  sin  deserved  no  covering.  .  .  .  They  esteem  it 

1  In  -  Epistle  Dedicatory."  •  "Good  News  from  Vm."  as. 


4g  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

a  virtue  to  lie,  deceive,  and  steal,  as  their  master  teacheth 
them.  ...  If  this  be  their  life,  what  think  you  shall 
become 'of  them  after  death,  but  to  be  partakers  with  the 
devil  and  his  angels  in  hell  for  evermore?  Having  in 
this  book  tried  to  induce  England  to  bring  only  her  noblest 
moods  to  her  consideration  of  the  affairs  of  Virginia,  hav- 
ing appealed  to  piety,  compassion,  magnanimity,  even  the 
love  of  gain,  at  last,  like  a  true-born  Englishman,  from  the 
wilderness  of  America  where  his  English  heart  still  beat 
within  him,  he  stretched  his  hand  homeward  and  touched 
the  chord  of  national  pride  :  "  Shall  our  nation,  hitherto 
famous  for  noble  attempts,  and  the  honorable  finishing  of 
what  they  have  undertaken,  be  now  taxed  for  inconstancy? 
.  Yea,  shall  we  be  a  scorn  among  our  neighbor 
princes,  for  basely  leaving  what  we  honorably  began? 
.  .  .  Awake,  you  true-hearted  Englishmen :  . 
remember  that  the  plantation  is  God's,  and  the  reward 
your  country's." 2 

IV. 

On  the  nineteenth  of  April,  1619,  there  arrived  at  James- 
town a  ship  from  England  having  on  board  a  new  governor 
for  Virginia,  Sir  George  Yeardley,  and  in  his  train  as  sec- 
retary for  the  colony  a  man  of  considerable  distinction  at 
that  time  in  Europe,  Master  John  Pory.  This  man  was 
then  about  forty-nine  years  of  age.  He  had  received  his 
education  at  Cambridge,  and  had  started  out  in  life  with 
bright  tokens  of  coming  usefulness  and  renown.  He  had 
many  accomplishments;  he  was,  besides,  a  wit  and  a  boon 
companion ;  his  style  of  writing  was  facile  and  sparkling ; 
and  he  had  the  gift  of  making  friends  in  high  places,  who 
conceived  great  hopes  of  him  and  were  glad  to  help  him 
to  realize  them.  He  became  a  member  of  Parliament ; 
for  several  years  he  was  much  employed  abroad  in  the 
diplomatic  service  of  his  country ;  but  before  middle  life 

1  "Good  News  from  Va."  23,  24.  *  Ibid.  33. 


JOHN  FOR  Y.  jg 

there  had  become  manifest  in  him  certain  traits  of  moral 
infirmity  which,  while  they  did  not  end  his  career,  cast  a 
shadow  across  it  and  dwarfed  it  in  efficiency  and  honor. 
Evidently,  his  convivial  habits  came  to  predominate  over 
his  resolution  for  work;  he  developed  a  restlessness  of 
temper,  an  uneasy  curiosity,  a  fickle  will,  a  scorn  of  plod- 
ding tasks,  which  turned  him  into  a  sort  of  genteel  vaga- 
bond, sent  him  wandering  over  Europe  and  the  East,  and 
threw  him  into  rather  frequent  familiarity  with  the  pawn- 
broker and  the  sponging-house.  More  unfortunate  than 
all,  as  was  gently  said  of  him  by  one  of  his  acquaintances, 
he  "  followed  the  custom  of  strong  potations."  He  never 
altogether  lost  his  hold  upon  his  influential  friends  ;  and 
doubtless  it  was  in  the  hope  of  giving  him  a  fresh  start  in 
life  that  they  procured  for  him  the  fine  appointment  of 
secretary  of  Virginia  and  sent  him  over  with  Sir  George 
Ycardley  to  work  out  a  better  career  for  himself  in  the 
new  world.  His  attractive  manners,  his  vivacity  of  speech, 
his  various  learning,  his  great  political  experience,  his 
manifold  knowledge  of  the  world,  rendered  him  an  im- 
portant personage  in  the  new  settlements  along  the  James 
River.  He  was  at  once  added  to  the  colonial  council ;  and 
on  the  meeting  of  the  general  assembly  he  was  given  the 
spcakership — an  office  which  his  brisk  talent  and  his  parlia- 
mentary experience  enabled  him  to  fill  with  unusual  ac- 
ceptance. Hut  he  ceased  from  all  his  offices  in  1621,  and 
in  1622  he  left  the  colony  for  England,  on  his  way  drop- 
ping in  upon  the  staid  young  community  of  Pilgrims  at 
Plymouth  and  paying  them  a  visit  which  proved  to  be 
mutually  agreeable.  During  his  residence  in  Virginia  he 
had  made  three  excursions  among  the  Indians,  of  which 
he  has  left  a  very  lively  account,1  spicing  it  with  anecdotes 
that  reveal  the  author's  alertness  for  the  grotesque  and 
amusing  aspects  of  the  savage  character.  For  example, 
he  introduces  us  to  a  certain  Namenacus,  the  king  of 

1  Published  in  Capt.  J.  Smith's  "On.  Hist."  II.  61-64. 

4 


CQ  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

Pawtuxent,  a  crafty,  complimentary,  and  murderous  poten- 
tate,  who,  hoping  to  have  the  pleasure  of  assassinating 
Pory  and  his  companions,  very  characteristically  began  his 
acquaintance  with  them  by  dramatic  assurances  of  his 
guileless  friendship.  "  He  led  us  into  a  thicket  where,  all 
sitting  down,  he  showed  us  his  naked  breast,  asking  if  we 
saw  any  deformity  upon  it.  We  told  him,  '  No.'  '  No 
more,'  said  he,  '  is  the  inside,  but  as  sincere  and  pure. 
Therefore  come  freely  to  my  country  and  welcome.' " 
Upon  a  subsequent  interview,  the  king  "  much  wondered 
at  our  Bible,  but  much  more  to  hear  it  was  the  law  of  our 
God  ;  and  the  first  chapter  of  Genesis,  expounded  of  Adam 
and  Eve,  and  simple  marriage.  To  which  he  replied,  '  He 
was  like  Adam  in  one  thing,  for  he  never  had  but  one  wife 
at  once.' " 

The  most  sprightly  specimen  of  Pory's  writings  is  a  let- 
ter which  he  sent  from  Virginia  to  the  celebrated  English 
diplomatist  and  statesman,  Sir  Dudley  Carleton,  and  which 
may  be  accepted  likewise  as  a  pleasant  example  of  the 
best  epistolary  style  of  the  period — colloquial,  gossiping, 
playful,  just  a  little  stiff  here  and  there  with  the  embroid- 
ery of  seventeenth  century  formalism ;  deeply  interesting 
also  for  its  life-like  sketches  of  the  wilderness,  the  Indians, 
and  the  daily  life  of  the  infant  colony.1  He  is  in  raptures 
over  the  fertility  of  the  country.  "  Vines  here  are  in  such 
abundance,  as  wheresoever  a  man  treads  they  are  ready  to 
embrace  his  foot.  I  have  tasted  here  of  a  great  black 
grape  as  big  as  a  Damascene,  that  hath  a  true  Muscatel 
taste ;  the  vine  whereof,  now  spending  itself  to  the  tops  of 
high  trees,  if  it  were  reduced  into  a  vineyard  and  there 
domesticated,  would  yield  incomparable  fruit."  Animals 
brought  from  Europe,  he  discovers,  do  not  degenerate  in 
America.  "For  cattle,  they  do  mightily  increase  here, 
both  kine,  hogs,  and  goats,  and  are  much  greater  in  stature 
than  the  race  of  them  first  brought  out  of  England."  But 

1  This  letter  is  printed  in    4     Mass.  Hist.  Soc.  Coll.  IX    4-30. 


GEORGE  SANDYS.  5 1 

Pory  had  the  eye  of  a  humorist,  and  he  amused  himself  in 
watching  the  germs  of  a  jubilant  and  lusty  social  display 
in  this  raw  community  of  pioneers:  "  Now  that  your 
lordship  may  know  that  we  are  not  the  veriest  beggars  in 
the  world,  our  cow-keeper  here  of  James  City  on  Sundays 
goes  accoutred  all  in  fresh  flaming  silk ;  and  a  wife  of  one 
that  in  England  had  professed  the  black  art,  not  of  a 
scholar,  but  of  a  collier  of  Croydon,  wears  her  rough  beaver 
hat,  with  a  fair  pearl  hat-band  and  a  silken  suit  thereto 
correspondent."  And  it  is  pleasant  to  hear  him  tell  how 
he  contrived  to  adapt  himself  to  such  a  life  and  to  get  rid 
of  his  time  in  a  dull  place  like  this:  "At  my  first  coming 
hither,  the  solitary  uncouthness  of  this  place,  compared 
with  those  parts  of  Christendom  or  Turkey  where  I  had 
been,  and  likewise  my  being  sequestered  from  all  occur- 
rents  and  passages  which  are  so  rife  there,  did  not  a  little 
vex  me.  And  yet  in  these  five  months  of  my  continuance 
here,  there  have  come  at  one  time  or  another  eleven  sail 
of  ships  into  this  river;  but  freighted  more  with  ignorance 
than  with  any  other  merchandise.  At  length  being  hard- 
ened to  this  custom  of  abstinence  from  curiosity,  I  am  re- 
solved wholly  to  mind  my  business  here,  and  next  after 
my  pen  to  have  some  good  book  always  in  store,  being  in 
solitude  the  best  and  choicest  company.  Besides  among 
these  crystal  rivers  and  odoriferous  woods  I  do  escape 
much  expense,  envy,  contempt,  vanity,  and  vexation  of 
mind." 

V. 

We  now  come  to  the  last  one  of  this  group  of  early 
writers — Argonauts  of  the  first  two  decades  of  Virginia — 
who,  achieving  more  than  they  knew,  laid  in  America  the 
foundations  of  the  new  English  literature.  The  writer 
whom  we  are  about  to  study,  George  Sandys,  was  perhaps 
the  only  one  of  all  his  fellow-craftsmen  here  who  was  a 
professed  man  of  letters.  Like  William  Strachey  and 
John  Pory  before  him,  he  held  an  official  appointment  in 


c  2  HIS  TOR  Y  OF  A  M ERICA  N  ^LI TERA  TURE. 

the  colony,  where  he  arrived  in  the  autumn  of  1621,  in 
the  company  of  Sir  Francis  Wyat,  who  at  that  time  began 
his  administration  as  governor.  In  personal  character 
George  Sandys  was  a  man  very  different  from  his  literary 
predecessor,  the  jocular  and  bibulous  Bohemian,  John  Pory. 
His  social  connections  in  England  were  high  ;  his  father 
being  the  celebrated  Edwin  Sandys,  archbishop  of  York; 
and  an  elder  brother  being  the  noble-natured  politician 
Sir  Edwin  Sandys,  who  was  the  friend  of  Richard  Hooker, 
and  was  so  dreaded  by  James  the  First  that  the  latter  once 
objected  to  his  election  as  treasurer  of  the  Virginia  Com- 
pany in  these  vigorous  words  : — "  Choose  the  devil  if  you 
will,  but  not  Sir  Edwin  Sandys."  At  the  time  of  his  ar- 
rival in  America  George  Sandys  was  forty-four  years  old, 
and  was  then  well  known  as  a  traveller  in  Eastern  lands, 
as  a  scholar,  as  an  admirable  'prose-writer,  but  especially  as 
a  poet.  His  claim  to  the  title  of  poet  then  rested  chiefly 
on  his  fine  metrical  translation  of  the  first  five  books  of 
Ovid's  Metamorphoses,  the  second  edition  of  which  came 
from  the  press  in  that  very  year  1621  in  which  the  poet 
sailed  away  to  America  in  the  retinue  of  Sir  Francis  Wyat. 
This  fragment  was  a  specimen  of  literary  workmanship  in 
many  ways  creditable.  The  rendering  of  the  original  is 
faithful  ;  and  though  in  some  places  the  version  labors 
under  the  burden  of  Latin  idioms  and  of  unmusical  proper 
names,  it  often  rises  into  freedom  and  velocity  of  move- 
ment, and  into  genuine  sweetness,  ease,  and  power.  '  How 
great  a  pity,'  perhaps  some  of  his  readers  thought  in 
1621,  'that  a  man  of  such  gifts  and  accomplishments 
should  banish  himself  to  the  savagery  of  the  Virginia  wil- 
derness, when  by  staying  at  home  he  might  give  us,  in  a 
version  so  pure  and  masterful,  the  remaining  ten  books  of 
the  Metamorphoses.'  But  there  was  one  great  poet  then 
in  England,  Michael  Drayton,  who  did  not  take  so  melan, 
choly  a  view  of  the  departure  of  George  Sandys  for  Vir- 
ginia. He,  too,  wished  the  translation  of  Ovid  completed 
by  that  same  deft  and  scholarly  hand ;  but  he  saw  no  rea- 


GEORGE  SANDYS.  53 

son  why  the  lamp  of  letters  should  not  burn  on  the  banks 
of  the  James  River,  as  well  as  on  those  of  the  Thames. 
Therefore  he  addressed  to  his  dear  friend  a  poetic  epistle 
in  which  he  exhorts  him  to  keep  up  his  literary  occupa- 
tions, even  in  the  rough  desert  to  which  he  has  gone : 

"  And,  worthy  George,  by  industry  and  use, 
Let's  sec  what  lines  Virginia  will  produce. 
Go  on  with  Ovid,  as  you  have  begun 
With  the  first  five  books  ;  let  your  numbers  run 
Glib  as  the  former  ;  so  shall  it  live  long 
And  do  much  honor  to  the  English  tongue. 
Entice  the  Muses  thither  to  repair  ; 
Entreat  them  gently  ;  train  them  to  that  air; 
For  they  from  hence  may  thither  hap  to  fly." ' 

These  exhortations  were  not  wasted  on  the  gentle  poet. 
His  vocation  to  the  high  service  of  letters  was  too  distinct 
to  be  set  aside  even  by  the  privations  of  pioneer  life  in 
Virginia  and  by  the  oppressive  tasks  of  his  official  position 
there.  And  yet  those  privations  and  those  tasks  proved 
to  be  greater,  as  it  chanced,  than  any  human  eye  had  fore- 
seen ;  for,  only  a  few  months  after  his  arrival,  namely  in 
March,  1622,  came  that  frightful  Indian  massacre  of  the 
white  settlers  along  the  James  River,  which  nearly  annihi- 
lated the  colony;  which  drove  in  panic  into  Jamestown  the 
survivors  from  the  outlying  settlements ;  which  turned  the 
peaceful  plantation,  just  beginning  to  be  prosperous,  into 
an  overcrowded  camp  of  half-fed  but  frenzied  hunters, 
hunting  only  for  red  men  with  rifle  and  bloodhound,  and 
henceforward  for  several  years  living  only  to  exterminate 
them  from  the  earth.  It  was  under  these  circumstances — 
the  chief  village  thronged  with  panic-struck  and  helpless 
people ;  all  industry  stopped  ;  suspicions,  fears,  complaints, 
filling  the  air;  his  high  official  position  entailing  upon  him 
special  cares  and  responsibilities;  without  many  books, 
without  a  lettered  atmosphere  or  the  cheer  of  lettered 

1  Drayton,  Works,  Anderson's  ed.  542. 


54 


HISTORY  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 


men — that  the  poet  was  to  pursue  his  great  task,  if  he  wa3 
to  pursue  it  at  all.  It  is  not  much  to  say  that  ordinary 
men  would  have  surrendered  to  circumstances  such  as 
these.  George  Sandys  did  not  surrender  to  them  ;  and 
that  he  was  able,  during  the  next  few  years,  robbing  sleep 
of  its  rights,  to  complete  his  noble  translation  of  the  fif- 
teen books  of  Ovid's  Metamorphoses,  is  worthy  of  being 
chronicled  among  the  heroisms  of  authorship.  It  is  prob- 
able that  Sandys  returned  to  England  in  1625  ;  at  any  rate, 
in  the  year  1626  he  brought  out  in  London,  in  a  folio 
volume,  the  first  edition  of  his  finished  work ;  and  in  his 
dedication  of  it  to  King  Charles,  he  made  a  touching 
reference  to  the  disasters  in  Virginia  from  which  he  had 
only  just  escaped,  and  to  the  great  difficulties  he  had 
overcome  in  the  composition  of  the  book  that  he  thus 
laid  at  his  sovereign's  feet.  He  speaks  of  his  translation 
as  "  this  .  .  .  piece  limned  by  that  unperfect  light 
which  was  snatched  from  the  hours  of  night  and  repose. 
For  the  day  was  not  mine,  but  dedicated  to  the  service 
of  your  great  father  and  yourself ;  which,  had  it  proved 
as  fortunate  as  faithful  in  me,  and  others  more  worthy, 
we  had  hoped,  ere  many  years  had  turned  about,  to  have 
presented  you  with  a  rich  and  well  peopled  kingdom  ;  from 
whence  now,  with  myself,  I  only  bring  this  composure : 

Inter  victrices  hederam  tibi  serpere  laurus. 

It  needeth  more  than  a  single  denization,  being  a  double 
stranger ;  sprung  from  the  stock  of  the  ancient  Romans, 
but  bred  in  the  new  world,  of  the  rudeness  whereof  it  can- 
not  but  participate,  especially  having  wars  and  tumults  to 
bring  it  to  light  instead  of  the  Muses." 

This  production,  handed  down  to  us  in  stately  form 
through  two  centuries  and  a  half,  is  the  very  first  expres- 
sion of  elaborate  poetry,  it  is  the  first  utterance  of  the 
conscious  literary  spirit,  articulated  in  America.  The  writ- 
ings which  precede  this  book  in  our  literary  history— the 
writings  of  Captain  John  Smith,  of  Percy,  of  Strachey,  of 


VEORGE  SANDYS. 


55 


Whitaker,  of  Pory  —  were  all  produced  for  some  immediate 
practical  purpose,  and  not  with  any  avowed  literary  inten- 
tions. This  book  may  well  have  for  us  a  sort  of  sacred- 
ness,  as  being  the  first  monument  of  English  poetry,  of  clas- 
sical scholarship,  and  of  deliberate  literary  art,  reared  on 
these  shores.  And  when  we  open  the  book,  and  examine 
it  with  reference  to  its  merits,  first,  as  a  faithful  rendering 
of  the  Latin  text,  and  second,  as  a  specimen  of  fluent, 
idiomatic,  and  musical  English  poetry,  we  find  that  in  both 
particulars  it  is  a  work  that  we  may  be  proud  to  claim  as 
in  some  sense  our  own,  and  to  honor  as  the  morning-star 
at  once  of  poetry  and  of  scholarship  in  the  new  world. 
For  an  illustration  of  the  vigor  and  melody  of  his  verse, 
we  may  select  a  brief  passage  from  the  sixth  book,  relat- 
ing the  woful  story  of  Philomela.  King  Tereus  has  per- 
petrated an  ineffable  crime  of  cruelty  and  lust  upon  Phil- 
omela, who  is  the  sister  of  his  wife  Procne  ;  and  the  latter, 
having  at  last  discovered  the  horrid  fact,  passes  into  a  rage 
against  her  husband  which  stimulates  all  her  faculties  to 
the  invention  of  some  form  of  revenge  that  may  be  worthy, 
in  its  exquisite  torment  and  in  its  annihilating  doom,  of 
the  monster  whom  she  intends  to  punish  : 

-  "  her  bosom  hardly  bears 
So  vast  a  rage." 

Her  innocent  sister,  the  terror-smitten  and  passive  victim 
of  the  appalling  crime,  she  sees  weeping,  and  gently  chides 
her  for  so  doing  : 

"  No  tears,  said  she,  our  lost  condition  needs, 
But  steel  ;  or,  if  thou  hast  what  steel  exceeds, 
I  for  all  horrid  practices  am  fit  — 
To  wrap  this  roof  in  flame,  and  him  in  it; 
His  eyes,  his  tongue,    .     .     . 
T  extirp  ;  or.  with  a  thousand  wounds  divorce 
His  guilty  soul.    The  deed  I  intend  is  great. 
But  what,  as  yet  I  know  not." 

In  the  terrible  calm  of  her  white  wrath,  while  she  is  thus 


c  6  HIS  TOR  Y  OF  A  ME  RICA  N  LI  TERA  TURE. 

waiting  for  some  device  of  perfect  retribution  with  which 
to  overwhelm  her  husband,  suddenly  enters  her  own  be- 
loved son  Itys.  But  Itys  is  his  son,  likewise  ;  the  one  ob- 
ject in  all  the  world  most  dear  to  him.  In  the  instant 
there  flames  through  her  soul  the  most  fierce  and  hideous 
inspiration  that  ever  possessed  a  mother's  mind :  by  a 
bloody  sacrifice  of  that  son  she  can  thrust  the  knife  of 
anguish  deepest  into  the  heart  of  her  husband.  The  whole 
plan  evolves  itself  before  her  in  a  flash ;  and  even  the 
warmth  of  her  own  love  for  her  darling  child  is  frozen  well- 
nigh  dead  in  comparison  with  the  intolerable  heat  of  her 
purpose  of  vengeance.  And  yet 

"  when  her  son  saluted  her,  and  clung 
Unto  her  neck;  mixed  kisses,  as  he  hung, 
With  childish  blandishments  ;   her  high-wrought  blood 
Began  to  calm,  and  rage  distracted  stood  : 
Tears  trickled  from  her  eyes  by  strong  constraint." 

But,  in  a  moment,  the  sight  of  her  sister  once  more, 
standing  in  the  woe  of  her  speechless  shame  and  pain,  re- 
calls her  to  her  unpitying  purpose,  and  she  breaks  out  into 
a  renewed  cry  of  vengeance  against  her  husband  through 
the  sacrifice  of  their  son.  Him  she  now  clutches  with  a 
maniacal  fury, 

"  as  when  by  Ganges'  floods 
A  tigress  drags  a  fawn  through  silent  woods. 
Retiring  to  the  most  sequestered  room, 
While  he,  with  hands  upheaved,  foresees  his  doom, 
Clings  to  her  bosom  ;  mother  !  mother  !  cried  ; 
She  stabs  him,  nor  once  turned  her  face  aside. 


His  yet  quick  limbs,  ere  all  his  soul  could  pass, 

She  piecemeal  tears.     Some  boil  in  hollow  brass, 

Some  hiss  on  spits.     The  pavements  blushed  with  blood. 

Procne  invites  her  husband  to  this  food, 

And  feigns  her  country's  rite,  which  would  afford 

No  servant,  nor  companion,  but  her  lord." 


GEORGE  SANDYS. 


57 


The  king  unwittingly  accepts  her  invitation  ;  he  comes 
to  the  feast ;  and  seated  on  his  grandsire's  throne,  devours, 
unknowingly,  the  tender  flesh  of  his  own  son.  Then,  when 
exhilarated  by  the  feast,  he 

"  bids  her — so  soul-blinded  ! — call  bis  boy. 
Procne  could  not  disguise  her  cruel  joy. 
In  full  fruition  of  her  horrid  ire, 
Thou  hast,  said  she,  within  thcc  thy  desire. 
He  looks  about,  asks  where  ;  and  while  again 
He  asks  and  calls,  all  bloody  with  the  slain. 
Forth  like  a  Fury,  Philomela  flew 
And  at  his  face  the  head  of  Itys  threw  ; 
Nor  ever  more  than  now  desired  a  tongue 
To  express  the  joy  of  her  revenged  wrong. 
He  with  loud  outcries  doth  the  board  repel, 
And  calls  the  Furies  from  the  depths  of  hell; 
Now  tears  his  breast,  and  strives  from  thence  in  vain 
To  pull  the  abhorrfcd  food  ;  now  weeps  amain, 
And  calls  himself  his  son's  unhappy  tomb  ; 
Then  draws  his  sword,  and  through  the  guilty  room 
Pursues  the  sisters,  who  appear  with  wings 
To  cut  the  air;  and  so  they  did.     One  '  sings 
In  woods  ;  the  other  *  near  the  house  remains, 
And  on  her  breast  yet  bears  her  murder's  stains. 
He,  swift  with  grief  and  fury,  in  that  space 
His  person  changed.     Long  tufts  of  feathers  grace 
His  shining  crown  ;  his  sword  a  bill  became  ; 
His  face  all  armed;  whom  we  a  lapwing  name."1 

Immediately  upon  its  publication  the  work  attained  in 
England  a  great  celebrity,  and  during  the  seventeenth 
century  passed  through  at  least  eight  editions.  The  au- 
thor lived  on  to  a  good  old  age,  devoting  himself  not  only 
to  original  poetry  but  to  the  translation  of  the  Psalms  and 
of  other  poetical  books  of  the  Bible ;  and  at  last  died,  be- 
loved and  honored,  at  Bexley  Abbey,  in  Kent,  in  1644. 
His  fame  did  not  pass  away  with  his  earthly  life.  Eigh- 

1  Philomela,  the  nightingale.  •  Procne,  the  swallow. 

*  Sandys'*  Ovid,  214,  215. 


5  8  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITER  A  TURE. 

teen  years  afterward  Thomas  Fuller,  in  terms  of  affec 
tionate  praise,  enrolled  him  among  the  worthies  of  Eng- 
land:  "  He  most  elegantly  translated  Ovid's  Metamor- 
phoses into  English  verse  ;  so  that  as  the  soul  of  Aristotle 
was  said  to  have  transmigrated  into  Thomas  Aquinas, 
.  .  .  Ovid's  genius  may  seem  to  have  passed  into 
Master  Sandys."  He  "  was  altogether  as  dexterous  at  in- 
venting as  translating;  and  his  own  poems  as  sprightful, 
vigorous,  and  masculine."1  John  Dryden  spoke  of  Sandys 
as  "the  best  versifier  of  the  former  age,"2  and  is  said  to 
have  declared  that  had  Sandys  finished  the  translation  of 
Virgil  which  he  had  begun,  he  himself  would  not  have  at- 
tempted it  after  him.  Pope,  whose  critical  ear  for  verse 
was  most  exacting,  and  whose  praise  was  never  easily  won, 
said  that  he  "  liked  extremely  " 3  Sandys's  translation  of 
Ovid. 

1  Thomas  Fuller,  "  Worthies  of  Eng."  ed.  1840,  III.  434. 
*  Works  of  Dryden,  ed.  1779,  XV.  14. 
3  Spence,  "Anecdotes,"  ed.  1820,  276. 


CHAPTER   IV. 

VIRGINIA:   ITS  LITERATURE   DURING  THE  REMAINDER 
OF  THE  FIRST  PERIOD. 

I. — The  establishment  of  Maryland  upon  the  territory  of  Virginia — Mary* 
land's  slight  literary  record  for  this  period  blended  with  that  of  Virginia — 
Father  Andrew  White  and  hu  I,atin  narrative — John  Hammond,  the 
Anglo-American,  studying  the  social  problems  of  England — His  solution 
of  them  in  the  word  America — His  book,  "Leah  and  Rachel,"  and  its 
original  American  flavor. 

II. — George  Alsop— His  life  in  Maryland — His  droll  book  about  Man-land 
— Comic  descriptions  of  the  effects  of  his  voyage — Vivid  accounts  of  the 
country,  of  its  productions. 

III. — Sketch  of  Bacon's  rebellion  in  1676—  The  heroic  and  capable  qualities 
of  Bacon — The  anonymous  manuscripts  relating  to  the  rebellion — Liter- 
ary indication  furnished  by  these  writings — Inscriptions  of  a  Ixleagucred 
Indian  fort— Of  Bacon's  conflicts  with  Berkeley— Of  Bacon's  military 
stratagem — Bacon's  death — Noble  poem  upon  his  death. 

IV. — Review  of  the  literary  record  of  Virginia  during  this  period — Its  com- 
pa  native  barrenness — Explanation  found  in  the  personal  traitsof  the  found- 
ers of  Virginia — And  in  their  peculiar  social  organization — Resulting  in 
inferior  public  prosperity — Especially  in  lack  of  schools  an-1  of  intellectual 
stimulus— Sir  William  Berkeley's  baneful  influence — Printing  prohibited 
in  Virginia  by  the  English  government  -Religious  freedom  prohibited  by 
the  people  of  Virginia — Literary  development  impossible  under  such  con- 
ditions. 

THE  brilliant  fact  in  the  first  period  of  the  literary  his- 
tory of  Virginia,  contributed  to  it  by  the  services  of  George 
Sandys,  may  awaken  within  us  the  expectation  of  finding 
there,  as  we  pass  onward  in  our  researches,  other  facts  of 
the  same  kind.  But  we  shall  scarcely  find  them.  Dur- 
ing the  remaining  years  of  the  period  that  we  are  now 
studying,  the  intellectual  life  of  the  great  colony  found 
vent,  if  at  all,  chiefly  in  some  other  way  than  that  of  litera- 
ture. 

59 


HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 


I. 

It  was  but  a  few  years  after  the  departure  of  George 
Sandys  from  Virginia  that  the  Roman  Catholic  nobleman, 
Lord  Baltimore,  a  favorite  of  King  Charles,  paying  a  visit 
to  Virginia,  and  being  fascinated  by  the  loveliness  and  the 
opulence  of  nature  there,  obtained  for  his  intended  colony 
that  choice  portion  of  Virginia  which  lies  north  of  the 
Potomac,  and  which  Virginia  parted  with  only  after  a  jeal- 
ous and  reluctant  pang  that  did  not  cease  to  ache  for  many 
a  year  afterward.  Had  the  colony  of  Maryland,  for  the 
period  now  under  view,  any  story  of  literary  achievement 
for  us  to  tell,  it  would  be  fitting  to  tell  it  in  this  place,  in 
immediate  connection  with  the  early  literary  history  of 
Virginia.  The  most  of  what  was  written  during  those 
years  on  either  side  of  the  Potomac,  was  in  the  form  of 
angry  pamphlets  relating  to  their  local  feuds,1  or  of  homely 
histories  of  pioneer  experience,2  or  of  mere  letters  about 
business,  —  all  being  too  crude  and  elemental  to  be  of  any 
interest  to  us  in  our  present  studies.  The  Jesuit  priest, 
Father  Andrew  White,  an  accomplished  man  and  a  devout 
servant  of  his  order,  wrote  in  Latin  an  elegant  account  8  of 
the  voyage  of  the  first  colonists  to  Maryland,  and  of  "  the 
manifold  advantages  and  riches  "  of  the  new  land  to  which 
he  dedicated  his  life,  and  in  which  he  hoped  would  "be 
sown  not  so  much  the  seeds  of  grain  and  fruit  trees  as  of 
religion  and  piety."4 

In  exploring  this  raw  and  savage  time,  we  encounter 
one  man,  John  Hammond,  who  became,  in  a  small  way, 

'See  documents  in  "Virginia  and  Maryland,"  Force,  Hist.  Tracts,  II. 
No.  12. 

"  As  Henry  Fleet's  "  Journal,"  in  Neill's  "Founders  ofMd."  19-37;  or, 
"  A  Relation  of  Md.,"  in  Sabin's  Reprints,  No.  2. 

"  Relatio  Itineris  in  Marylandum  ;"  discovered  in  Rome  in  1832  ;  trans- 
lated into  Eng.  and  printed  in  Force,  Hist.  Tracts,  IV.  No.  12.  Better  ed, 
in  Maryland  Hist.  Soc.  Collections,  1874. 

*  White's  "  Relation,"  4. 


JOHN  HAMMOND.  6l 

an  author  in  spite  of  himself,  an  Englishman  transformed 
by  his  long  residence  here  into  a  stanch  and  emphatic 
American,  and  belonging  equally  to  Virginia  and  to  Mary- 
land. To  the  former  colony  he  came  in  1635  ;  after  living 
there  nineteen  years  he  removed  to  Maryland,  whence  at 
the  end  of  two  years,  namely,  in  1656,  he  went  temporarily 
to  England.  Though  back  in  the  old  home,  he  was  at 
once  homesick  for  the  new  one :  "  It  is  not  long  since  I 
came  from  thence,  .  .  .  nor  do  I  intend,  by  God's  assist- 
ance, to  be  long  out  of  it  again  ;  " l  "  it  is  that  country  in 
which  I  desire  to  spend  the  remnant  of  my  days,  in  which 
I  covet  to  make  my  grave."'  As  he  went  about  England, 
two  things  greatly  grieved  him :  one  was,  that  he  found 
England  full  of  poor  people,  who  were  borne  down  in  the 
press  and  rush  for  existence  there,  ragged,  half-fed,  crushed 
mortals,  without  any  hope  of  ever  rising  out  of  their  mis- 
ery so  long  as  they  stayed  in  the  old  world  ;  the  second 
thing  was,  that  while  the  most  of  these  hapless  people 
might  escape  from  such  troubles  by  going  to  the  new 
world — where  were  room  and  chance  enough  for  all — they 
were  frightened  from  the  attempt  by  certain  wild  and  rank 
calumnies  against  America  which  then  pervaded  England. 
It  seemed,  therefore,  to  be  his  duty  as  an  American  abroad 
to  sit  down  immediately  and  write  a  little  book,  giving  the 
testimony  of  his  own  experience  in  America  for  "  upward 
of  one  and  twenty  years,"  and  by  the  truth  putting  to 
flight  those  clouds  of  lies  that  had  "  blinded  and  kept  off 
many  from  going  thither  whose  miseries  and  misfortunes 
by  staying  in  England  are  much  to  be  lamented,  and 
much  to  be  pitied."8 

Thus  was  produced  in  London,  and  published  there,  in 
1656,  an  extremely  vigorous  and  sprightly  tract,  which  the 
author  quaintly  named  "  Leah  and  Rachel,"  4  these  words 
representing  "  the  two  fruitful  sisters,  Virginia  and  Mary- 


'  "  Leah  and  Rachel."  7.  f  Ibid.  26,  27. 

» Ibid.  7.  «  Printed  in  Force,  Hist.  Tracts,  No.  14. 


62  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

land."  Evidently  John  Hammond  had  but  little  practice 
in  the  use  of  a  pen  ;  even  to  himself  his  sentences  looked 
"  so  harsh  and  disordered  "  that  he  was  rather  sorry  to  fix 
his  name  to  them.  But  he  was  a  man  of  strong  sense ;  he 
was  very  much  in  earnest ;  and  he  spoke  his  mind  in  a 
language  so  manly,  frank,  and  vital,  that  even  its  uncouth- 
ness  cannot  take  away  the  interest  with  which  we  stop 
and  listen  to  him.  The  charges  made  against  Virginia 
and  Maryland,  he  bluntly  repeats,  not  softening  them : 
"  The  country  is  reported  to  be  an  unhealthy  place  ;  a  nest 
of  rogues,  .  .  .  dissolute  and  rooking  persons."  As 
regards  Virginia,  he  admits  that  "  at  the  first  settling  and 
many  years  after,  it  deserved  those  aspersions  ;  nor  were 
they  then  aspersions,  but  truths."  For  then  in  England 
"  were  jails  emptied,  youth  seduced,  and  infamous  women 
drilled  in  "  and  sent  to  Virginia ;  where  were  "  no  civil 
courts  of  justice  but  under  a  martial  law,  no  redress  of 
grievances ;  complaints  were  repaid  with  stripes,  moneys 
with  scoffs,  tortures  made  delights,  and  in  a  word  all  and 
the  worst  that  tyranny  could  inflict.  .  .  .  Yet  was  not 
Virginia  all  this  while  without  divers  honest  and  virtuous 
inhabitants,"  who  at  last  rallied,  put  down  their  white  bar- 
barians, and  brought  about  the  beginning  of  a  better  state, 
causing  good  laws  to  be  made,  encouraging  industry,  and 
even  sending  to  England  for  preachers.  Unfortunately 
not  many  of  the  preachers  who  came  in  response  to  this 
appeal  were  of  the  kind  to  benefit  the  Virginians  or  any 
one  else ;  for  "  very  few  of  good  conversation  would  ad- 
venture thither;  .  .  .  yet  many  came,  such  as  wore 
black  coats,  and  could  babble  in  a  pulpit,  roar  in  a  tavern, 
exact  from  their  parishioners,  and  rather  by  their  dissolute- 
ness destroy  than  feed  their  flocks." l  But  in  spite  of  all  dis- 
advantages, Virginia  had  done  much  to  redeem  itself ;  had 
"  become  a  place  of  pleasure  and  plenty,"  and  "  a  model 
on  which  industry  may  as  much  improve  itself  as  in  any 

1  "  Leah  and  Rachel,"  7-9. 


JOHN  HAMMOND.  63 

habitable  part  of  the  world  ;  "  and  both  Virginia  and  Mary- 
land offered  an  almost  boundless  opportunity  to  those  who 
in  England  had  no  opportunity  at  all.  This  was  the  bur- 
den of  his  valiant  and  hearty  speech.  He  could  not  get 
over  his  astonishment  at  "  the  dull  stupidity  of  people 
necessitated  in  England,  who  .  .  .  live  here  a  base, 
slavish,  penurious  life  ;  .  .  .  choosing  rather  than  they 
will  forsake  England  to  stuff  Newgate,  Bridewell,  and 
other  jails  with  their  carcasses,  nay,  cleave  to  Tyburn  it- 
self. .  .  .  Others  itch  out  their  wearisome  lives  in  reli- 
ance of  other  men's  charities,  an  uncertain  and  unmanly 
expectation.  Some,  more  abhorring  such  courses,  betake 
themselves  to  almost  perpetual  and  restless  toil  and  drudg- 
eries, out  of  which  .  .  .  they  make  hard  shift  to  subsist 
from  hand  to  mouth,  until  age  or  sickness  takes  them  off 
from  labor,  and  directs  them  the  way  to  beggary."1  One 
can  almost  see  now  the  droll  mixture  of  pity  and  impa- 
tience with  which  this  clear-headed  and  forceful  American, 
fresh  from  the  ample  elbow-room  and  the  easy  subsistence 
of  his  own  country,  must  have  stalked  about  the  streets  of 
London  and  stared  at  the  paltry  and  painful  devices  that 
poor  men  and  women  had  to  resort  to  there  for  keeping 
soul  and  body  together.  How  grim  is  the  unintended 
satire  of  this  picture !  "  I  have  seriously  considered  when 
I  have  (passing  the  streets)  heard  the  several  cries,  and 
noting  the  commodities  and  the  worth  of  them  they  have 
carried  and  cried  up  and  down,  how  possibly  a  livelihood 
could  be  exacted  out  of  them,  as  to  cry  •  matches,'  '  small- 
coal,'  '  blacking/  '  pen  and  ink,'  •  thread  laces,'  and  a  hun- 
dred more  such  kind  of  trifling  merchandises.  Then  look- 
ing  on  the  nastiness  of  their  linen  habits  and  bodies,  I 
conclude  if  gain  sufficient  could  be  raised  out  of  them  for 
subsistence,  yet  their  manner  of  living  was  degenerate  and 
base,  and  their  condition  ...  far  below  the  meanest 
servant  in  Virginia."  *  One  day  this  determined  student 

1  "  Leah  and  Rachel,"  17,  18.  '  Ibid.  18. 


64  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

of  social  science  got  his  eye  fastened  upon  an  individual 
specimen  of  wretchedness  in  the  London  streets,  a  poor 
fagot-pedler,  whom  our  author  thereupon  followed  up 
and  investigated  thoroughly  hour  by  hour.  "  I  saw  a 
man  heavily  loaden  with  a  burden  of  fagots  on  his  back, 
crying,  '  dry  fagots,'  '  dry  fagots.'  He  travelled  much 
ground,  bawled  frequently,  and  sweat  with  his  burden ; 
but  I  saw  none  buy.  Near  three  hours  I  followed  him,  in 
which  time  he  rested.  I  entered  into  discourse  with  him  ; 
offered  him  drink,  which  he  thankfully  accepted  of.  .  .  . 
I  inquired  what  he  got  by  each  burden  when  sold  :  he 
answered  me,  'three  pence.'  I  further  asked  him  what  he 
usually  got  a  clay:  he  replied,  'some  days  nothing,  some 
days  sixpence;  sometimes  more,  but  seldom.'  Methought 
it  was  a  pitiful  life,  and  I  admired  how  he  could  live  on 
it !  "l  Therefore  he  would  speak  out  the  truth  about  Vir- 
ginia and  Maryland,  and  thus  "  stop  those  black-mouthed 
babblers,"  who,  abusing  "  God's  great  blessing  in  adding 
to  England  so  flourishing  a  branch,"  wickedly  persuaded 
"  many  souls  rather  to  follow  desperate  and  miserable 
courses  in  England  than  to  engage  in  so  honorable  an 
undertaking  as  to  travel  .  .  .  there."2 

This,  indeed,  is  genuine  American  talk.  Here,  cer- 
tainly, in  these  brusque  sentences,  do  we  find  a  literature 
smacking  of  American  soil  and  smelling  of  American  air. 
Here,  thus  early  in  our  studies,  do  we  catch  in  American 
writings  that  new  note  of  hope  and  of  help  for  humanity 
in  distress,  and  of  a  rugged  personal  independence,  which, 
almost  from  the  hour  of  our  first  settlements  in  this  land, 
America  began  to  send  back,  with  unveiled  exultation,  to 
Europe.  Henceforward,  for  myriads  of  men  and  women 
in  the  ancient  nations,  to  whom  life  had  always  been  a 
hard  battle  and  a  losing  one,  this  single  word  America 
blossomed  into  a  whole  vocabulary  of  words,  all  testifying 
plainly  to  them  of  a  better  time  coming,  of  a  reasonable 

2"  Leah  and  Rachel,"  18.  s  Ibid.  20. 


GEORGE  ALSOP.  65 

chance,  somewhere,  even  in  this  world,  of  getting  a  fresh 
start  in  life,  and  of  winning  the  victory  over  poverty, 
nastiness,  and  fear ;  nourishing  within  them  a  manly  might 
and  pride,  a  resolute  discontent  with  failure,  a  rightful 
ambition  to  get  on  in  the  race,  a  healthy  disdain  of  doing 
in  this  life  anything  less  than  one's  best.  For  the  first 
time,  perhaps,  in  the  long  experience  of  mankind  on  this 
planet,  was  then  proclaimed  this  strong  and  jocund  creed  ; 
and  it  was  proclaimed  first,  as  it  has  been  since  proclaimed 
continually,  in  American  literature.  Of  that  literature  it 
still  constitutes  a  most  original,  racy,  and  characteristic 
trait. 

II. 

Whatsoever  distinction  may  be  derived  from  the  little 
book  that  has  been  just  spoken  of,  Maryland  and  Virginia 
may  divide  it  between  them.  We  have  now  to  mention  a 
book  the  distinction  of  which  belongs  to  Maryland  alone. 
In  1666,  just  ten  years  after  John  Hammond's  fearless 
and  dashing  brochure  started  out  to  tilt  with  English  mis- 
apprehensions of  America,  there  appeared  in  London 
another  brochure  on  a  somewhat  similar  errand, — an  er- 
rand explained  in  the  work  itself  in  some  lines  addressed 
to  the  author: 

"  Thou  held'st  it  noble  to  maintain  the  truth 
'Gainst  all  the  rabble-rout  that  yelping  stand 
To  cast  aspersions  on  thy  Maryland."1 

This  book,  altogether  a  jovial/vivacious,  and  most  amus- 
ing production,  was  entitled  "  A  Character  of  the  Province 
of  Maryland."'  Of  its  author,  George  Alsop,  little  is 
known.  He  was  born  in  1638;  and  he  had  served  in  Lon- 
don a  two  years'  apprenticeship  to  something — probably 
to  the  profession  of  solicitor— when,  in  1658,  being  just 
twenty  years  old,  and  breathing  out  threatenings  and 

1  "  H.  W."  to  hit  friend  George  Alsop. 
•  New  ed.  by  John  Gilmary  Shea,  N.  Y.  1860, 
5 


66  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITER  A  TURE. 

slaughter  against  Oliver  Cromwell,  he  embarked  for  Mary, 
land,  so  poor  that  he  bound  himself,  as  is  supposed,  to  re- 
pay the  price  of  his  transportation  by  laboring  as  a  servant 
for  four  years  after  his  arrival  in  the  colony.  He  had  the 
good  fortune  to  fall  into  the  hands  of  a  generous  master ; 
and  with  his  unique  gift  of  cheerfulness  he  even  found  in 
his  four  years  of  servitude  "  a  commanding  and  undeniable 
enjoyment."1  The  restoration  of  King  Charles  brought 
a  perfect  tempest  of  pleasure  to  this  original  MarkTapley ; 
and  he  celebrated  in  verse  the  satisfaction  with  which,  in 
his  distant  abiding-place,  he  reflected  on 

"  Noll's  old  brazen  head, 

Which  on  the  top  of  Westminster's  high  lead 
Stands  on  a  pole,  erected  to  the  sky, 
As  a  grand  trophy  to  his  memory."2 

As  soon  as  he  could  do  so,  he  seems  to  have  gone  back 
to  England.  Whether  he  remained  there,  or  returned  to 
Maryland,  is  not  known.  At  any  rate,  for  Maryland  he 
cherished  only  kind  recollections  ;  he  was  willing,  prob- 
ably for  a  consideration,  to  be  her  literary  champion  ;  and 
in  the  year  already  named,  he  huddled  together  and 
printed  that  medley  of  frolicsome  papers,  which  appear  to 
have  been  written  mostly  in  Maryland,  and  which  set  forth 
from  various  droll  points  of  view  a  description  of  that 
province.  There  was  but  one  other  American  book8  pro- 
duced in  the  seventeenth  century  that  for  mirthful,  gro- 
tesque, and  slashing  energy,  can  compare  with  this.  A1-. 
sop's  book  is  written  both  in  prose  and  in  verse,  and  is  a 
heterogeneous  mixture  of  fact  and  fiction,  of  description 
and  speculation,  of  wild  fun  and  wild  nonsense.  "  If  I  have 
.  .  .  composed  anything,"  says  this  literary  merry, 
andrew,  in  his  dedication  of  the  book  to  Lord  Baltimore, 
"that's  wild  and  confused,  it  is  because  I  am  so  myself; 


1  Dedication.  *  "  A  Character  of  the  Province  of  Md."  IO2,  103, 

*  "  The  Simple  Cobbler  of  Agawam." 


GEORGE  ALSOP.  6/ 

and  the  world,  as  far  as  I  can  perceive,  is  not  much  out  of 
the  same  trim."  Then  turning  to  "  the  merchant  adven- 
turers for  Maryland,"  he  tells  them  pertly:  "This  dish  of 
discourse  was  intended  for  you  at  first,  but  it  was  man- 
ners to  let  my  Lord  have  the  first  cut,  the  pie  being  his." 
From  the  beginning  to  the  end  of  his  book,  nearly  every- 
thing is  jocular,  much  of  it  coarse,  some  of  it  indelicate 
and  even  obscene.  His  good  humor  is  of  the  loud-laugh- 
ing kind.  He  is  a  scaramouch  with  pen  in  hand,  and  he 
pokes  fun  at  himself  as  at  everybody  else.  "  I  have  ven- 
tured to  come  abroad  in  print,  and  if  I  should  be  laughed 
at  for  my  good  meaning,  it  would  so  break  the  credit  of 
my  understanding  that  I  should  never  dare  to  show  my 
face  upon  the  Exchange  of  conceited  wits  again."  *  His 
own  praises,  likewise,  he  sounds  in  lusty  fashion ;  yet  he 
hopes  that  no  one  will  think  this  unjustifiable:  "For  I 
dwell  so  far  from  my  neighbors,  that  if  I  do  not  praise 
myself,  nobody  else  will."'  After  the  frequent  manner  of 
authors  in  those  days,  he  has,  besides  prefatory  addresses 
to  patrons,  readers,  and  friends  in  general,  a  prefatory 
address  to  the  book  itself: 

"  Farewell,  poor  brat !  thou  in  a  monstrous  world, 
In  swaddling  clothes,  thus  up  and  down  art  hurled  ; 
There  to  receive  what  destiny  doth  contrive, 
Either  to  perish  or  be  saved  alive. 
Good  Fate  protect  thee  from  a  critic's  power  ; 

For  if  they  once  but  wring  and  screw  their  mouth, 

Cock  up  their  hats,  and  set  the  point  due-south, 

Arms  all  akimbo,  and  with  belly  strut 

As  if  they  had  Parnassus  in  their  gut. 

These  are  the  symptoms  of  the  murthering  fall 

Of  my  poor  infant,  and  his  burial."  * 

His  direct  account  of   Maryland   he  presents  in  four 
parts:   first,  the  country;   second,  its  inhabitants;  third, 

1  Address  to  the  Merchant  Adventurers.  *  Preface. 

»  -  A  Character  of  the  Province  of  Md."  28. 


68  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

the  arrangements  for  carrying  poor  people  thither;  fourth, 
traffic  and  agriculture.  He  then  gives  a  description  of 
"  the  wild  and  naked  Indians  of  Maryland,  their  customs, 
manners,  absurdities,  and  religion."  Finally,  he  inserts 
some  of  the  letters — piquant  and  ridiculous  they  are — 
which  he  wrote  while  in  Maryland  to  his  friends  at  home. 
Even  his  rough  voyage  over  the  sea,  and  the  disagree- 
able effects  of  it  upon  himself,  he  cannot  speak  of  seriously. 
"  We  had  a  blowing  and  dangerous  passage  of  it,"  he 
says ;  "  and  for  some  days  after  I  arrived  I  was  an  abso- 
lute Copernicus,  it  being  one  point  of  my  moral  creed  to 
believe  the  world  had  a  pair  of  long  legs,  and  walked  with 
the  burthen  of  creation  upon  her  back.  For,  to  tell  you 
the  very  truth  of  it,  for  some  days  upon  land,  after  so  long 
and  tossing  a  passage,  I  was  so  giddy  that  I  could  hardly 
tread  an  even  step  ;  so  that  all  things,  both  above  and 
below,  .  .  .  appeared  to  me  like  the  Kentish  Britons  to 
William  the  Conqueror — in  amoving  posture."1  Under- 
taking to  give  some  idea  of  the  topography  of  the  province, 
he  accomplishes  it,  but  under  a  rather  bold  anatomical 
image :  "  Maryland  is  a  province  situated  upon  the  large 
extending  bowels  of  America  ;  "2  and  the  country  itself  is 
"  pleasant  in  respect  of  the  multitude  of  navigable  rivers  and 
creeks  that  conveniently  and  most  profitably  lodge  within 
the  arms  of  her  green-spreading  and  delightful  woods."3 
He  is  captivated  by  the  beauty  of  this  magnificent  and 
merry  new  world:  "  He  who  out  of  curiosity  desires  to  see 
the  landskip  of  the  creation  drawn  to  the  life,  or  to  read 
nature's  universal  herbal  without  book,  may,  with  the 
optics  of  a  discreet  discerning,  view  Maryland  dressed  in 
her  green  and  fragrant  mantle  of  the  Spring,"  *  where  the 
trees,  plants,  and  flowers  "  by  their  dumb  vegetable  ora- 
tory each  hour  speak  to  the  inhabitants  in  silent  acts,  that 
they  need  not  look  for  any  other  terrestrial  paradise  to 

1  "  A  Character  of  the  Province  of  Md."  93.  *  Ibid.  35. 

*  Ibid-  35-  «  Ibid.  36. 


BUR  WELL  PAPERS.  69 

suspend  or  tire  their  curiosity  upon  while  she  is  extant."  * 
He  is  delighted  also  at  the  multitude  and  the  physical 
thrift  of  the  animals  wandering  in  these  illimitable  forests; 
and  he  expresses  his  peculiar  enthusiasm  in  his  own  comic 
and  obstreperous  style :  "  Herds  of  deer  are  as  numerous 
in  this  province  of  Maryland  as  cuckolds  can  be  in  Lon- 
don, only  their  horns  are  not  so  well  dressed  and  tipped 
with  silver;"*  "the  park  they  traverse  their  ranging  and 
unmeasured  walks  in,  is  bounded  and  impanelled  in  with 
no  other  pales  than  the  rough  and  billowed  ocean."  * 
"  Here,  if  the  devil  had  such  a  vagary  in  his  head  as  he 
had  once  among  the  Gadarenes,  he  might  drown  a  thou- 
sand head  of  hogs,  and  they'd  ne'er  be  missed ;  for  the 
very  woods  of  this  province  swarm  with  them."  * 

III. 

In  the  year  1676  there  occurred  in  Virginia  an  outburst 
of  popular  excitement  which,  for  a  hundred  and  fifty  years 
afterward,  was  grotesquely  misrepresented  by  the  histo- 
rians, and  which  only  within  recent  years  has  begun  to 
work  itself  clear  of  the  traditional  perversion.  This  excite- 
ment is  still  indicated  by  the  sinister  name  that  was  at 
first  applied  to  it,  Bacon's  rebellion.  With  this  remark- 
able event  the  literary  history  of  Virginia  now  becomes 
curiously  involved ;  and  it  is  necessary  to  our  purposes 
that  we  should  give  here  at  least  an  outline  of  it. 

Upon  the  restoration  of  Charles  the  Second  in  1660, 
the  Old  Dominion  of  Virginia,  which  is  accurately  de- 
scribed by  its  latest  historian  as  having  been  "  the  most 
Anglican  .  .  .  and  most  loyal  of  the  colonies,"  8  was 
treated  with  characteristic  ingratitude  by  the  Stuart  king, 
whose  accession  to  power,  it  was  wittily  said,  signified 
indemnity  to  his  enemies  and  oblivion  to  his  friends. 

1  "  A  Character  of  the  Province  of  Md."  37.  *  Ibid.  94- 

» Ibid.  39.  *  Ibid.  94. 

•  C.  Campbell.  "  Hist.  Va."  282. 


70  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

There  was  long  a  tradition  in  this  country  that  at  his  coro- 
nation the  restored  monarch  wore  a  robe  of  silk  sent  to 
him  by  his  cavalier  subjects  in  Virginia.  "  But  this,"  bit- 
terly remarks  the  old  Virginia  historian,  Beverley,1  "  was 
all  the  reward  the  country  had  for  their  loyalty."  Even 
this  reward,  however,  the  country  did  not  have  ;  for  the 
agreeable  tradition  relating  to  the  coronation-robe  has  now 
been  exploded.2  The  first  parliament  under  King  Charles 
passed  a  series  of  navigation  acts  so  selfish  and  so  pitiless 
as  nearly  to  annihilate  every  agricultural  and  commercial 
interest  of  Virginia,  to  lead  to  a  general  paralysis  of  in- 
dustry there,  and  to  excite  a  universal  discontent  and 
alarm.  Moreover,  in  disregard  of  all  valid  land-titles  and 
of  all  valuable  improvements  upon  the  lands,  the  king  kept 
giving  away  to  his  favorites  large  tracts  of  the  most  popu- 
lous territory  in  Virginia,  ignoring  the  real  owners  of  the 
soil,  or  transferring  them  with  it,  as  if  they  had  been  but 
herds  of  cattle  or  gangs  of  serfs.  These  acts  of  parliamen- 
tary and  regal  injustice,  continued  recklessly  from  1660  to 
1676,  were  enough  to  destroy  all  public  and  private  pros- 
perity in  Virginia,  and  to  give  to  them,  instead  of  their  old 
loyal  serenity  and  submissiveness,  hearts  burning  with  ex- 
asperation or  sullen  with  a  sort  of  lawless  despair.  But 
even  this  was  not  all.  Just  on  the  tangled  western  verge 
of  the  narrow  territory  occupied  by  the  white  settlements 
in  Virginia,  began  the  wilderness — the  still  immense  and 
impenetrable  lair  of  the  red  men.  Twice  before  in  the 
life  of  the  colony,  first  in  1622  and  again  in  1639,  Virginia 
had  tasted  the  horrors  of  an  Indian  massacre.  And  now 
once  more,  in  the  spring  of  1676,  at  the  very  moment 
when  the  minds  of  men  were  torn  by  anxieties  at  the  law- 
less interference  of  the  king  and  parliament  with  their 
most  valuable  rights,  and  were  in  anguish  over  the  next 
possible  development  in  this  tragedy  of  despotism  from 
beyond  the  ocean,  suddenly,  from  the  opposite  quarter, 

1  "  Hist.  Va."  I.  53.  '  C.  Campbell,  "  Hist.  Va."  256. 


BUR  WELL  PAPERS,  ji 

out  of  the  abysses  of  the  woods,  there  swept  toward  them 
the  heart-shaking  terror  of  an  aggressive  Indian  war.  In 
a  tumult  and  thicket  of  miseries  like  this,  the  people  called 
earnestly  upon  the  royal  governor,  Sir  William  Berkeley, 
as  their  military  and  civil  chief,  to  take  the  necessary 
measures  for  repelling  these  horrid  assaults — to  organize 
the  people  into  an  army  and  to  lead  them  against  the  foe, 
so  that  a  thousand  scattered  homes  might  be  protected 
from  the  peril  that  was  moving  swiftly  toward  them. 
For  reasons  that  cannot  here  be  described  in  detail — the 
basest  reasons  of  jealousy,  indolence,  selfishness,  and  es- 
pecially avarice — this  renowned  governor  gave  to  the  peo- 
ple promises  of  help,  and  promises  only.  But  something 
was  to  be  done  at  once  by  somebody.  Nearer  and  nearer 
came  the  great  danger,  and  still  bloodier  and  more  fre- 
quent became  the  onslaughts  of  the  Indians.  Then  the 
people  arose  in  their  anger,  and  since  their  governor  would 
not  lead  them  to  the  war,  with  unanimous  voice  they 
called  upon  one  of  their  own  number  to  be  their  leader, 
Nathaniel  Bacon,  a  man  only  thirty  years  of  age,  of  con- 
siderable landed  wealth,  of  high  social  connections,  a 
lawyer  trained  in  the  Inns  of  Court  in  London,  an  orator 
of  commanding  eloquence,  a  man  who  by  his  endow- 
ments of  brain  and  eye  and  hand  was  a  natural  leader 
and  king  of  men.  He,  already  exasperated  against  the 
Indians  by  injuries  inflicted  on  his  own  family,  obeyed  the 
call  of  the  people.  He  led  them  against  the  Indians, 
whom  he  drove  back  with  tremendous  punishment.  But 
by  the  jealous  and  haughty  despot  in  the  governor's  chair, 
he  was  at  once  proclaimed  a  rebel ;  a  price  was  set  upon 
his  head ;  and  the  people  who  followed  him  were  put 
under  ban  for  the  crime  of  doing  the  duty  which  the  gov- 
ernor himself  would  not  do — the  crime  of  defending  their 
own  homes  from  butchery  and  flame.  Then  followed  a 
series  of  swift  conflicts,  military  and  political,  between 
Bacon  and  the  governor ;  and  at  last,  in  that  same  year, 
Bacon  himself  died,  suddenly  ami  mysteriously,  leaving  no 


72  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

competent  successor  to  carry  on  the  struggle ;  sadder  than 
all,  leaving  no  barrier  between  his  devoted  and  now  for- 
lorn followers,  and  the  heated  vengeance  of  Sir  William 
Berkeley.  Twenty-five  persons  were  hung  or  shot  to  soothe 
that  vengeance, — an  atrocious  fact,  which,  when  reported 
in  England,  drew  from  Charles  the  Second  the  indolent 
sneer  that  "  the  old  fool  had  taken  away  more  lives  in  that 
naked  country,  than  himself  had  taken  for  the  murder  of 
his  father.1 

It  would  have  been  strange  indeed  if  a  great  popular 
movement  like  this — so  deep,  passionate,  so  full  of  tragic 
and  picturesque  incident,  and  concentrated  about  a  hero 
who  had  every  personal  attribute  to  inthrall  the  imagina- 
tions of  the  people — had  not  found  expression  in  some 
contemporaneous  literary  form.  And  yet  for  more  than  a 
hundred  years  afterward  it  was  not  known  that  there  had 
been  any  such  expression.  Shortly  after  our  Revolutionary 
War,  however,  it  was  discovered  that  in  an  old  and  honor- 
able family  in  the  Northern  Neck  of  Virginia,  some  man- 
uscripts had  been  preserved,  evidently  belonging  to  the 
seventeenth  century,  evidently  written  by  one  or  more  of 
the  adherents  of  Nathaniel  Bacon,  and  casting  much  new 
light  upon  Bacon's  character,  and  upon  the  tumultuous 
events  with  which  his  name  is  connected.2 

In  studying  these  writings,  produced  in  Virginia  in  the 
last  quarter  of  the  seventeenth  century,  every  one  will  be 
likely  to  notice  the  total  transformation  in  the  spirit  and 
form  of  prose  style  which  they  represent,  when  compared 
with  the  writings  produced  in  Virginia  during  the  first 
quarter  of  the  seventeenth  century.  In  the  more  modern 
compositions  we  find  no  longer  the  childlike  unconscious- 
ness, the  idiomatic  ease,  the  simple,  fluent,  brave  pic- 
turesqueness  that  attracted  our  notice  and  excited  our 

1  Williamson,  "  Hist.  North  Carolina,"  I.  229. 

*  These  manuscripts  were  first  printed  in  2  Mass.  Hist.  Soc.  Coll.  I.  27-80, 
and  are  sometimes  called  the  Burwell  Papers  from  the  name  of  a  family  in 
King  William  County  by  whom  they  were  first  given  to  the  public. 


BUR  WELL  PAPERS, 


73 


pleasure  in  the  earlier  ones.  Evidently  between  these  two 
groups  of  writings  have  passed  fifty  years  of  intellectual 
change,  during  which,  at  the  metropolis  of  English  speech 
and  of  English  literature,  fantastic  poetry  and  literary 
quibbling  have  come  into  vogue.  Evidently  in  this  inter- 
val the  strength  of  writers  in  our  tongue  has  been  given 
to  the  chase  after  conceits  and  surprises  in  style ;  the 
reign  of  French  mannerisms  has  come  in  with  the  reign  of 
the  second  Charles,  and  with  it  the  ambition  for  smartness 
of  phrase,  for  epigram,  antithesis,  and  pun.  The  author  of 
the  prose  portions  of  these  manuscripts  reflects,  on  this 
side  of  the  ocean,  the  literary  foibles  that  were  in  fashion 
on  the  other  side  of  the  ocean.  He  composes  his  sentences 
as  if  he  were  writing  for  a  club  of  jaded  London  wits,  and 
were  conscious  of  being  unable,  by  the  inward  worth  of 
his  ideas,  to  hold  their  flabby  attention,  and  of  having  to 
do  so  by  continually  fluttering  in  their  faces  the  ribbons 
and  tassels  of  his  brisk  phrases.  But  apart  from  the  dis- 
agreeable air  of  verbal  affectation  and  of  effort  in  these 
writings,  they  are  undeniably  spirited  ;  they  produce  before 
us  departed  scenes  with  no  little  energy  and  life;  and  the 
flavor  of  mirth  which  seasons  them  is  not  unpleasant. 

The  writer  gives,  in  the  first  place,  an  account  of  the 
preliminary  troubles  with  the  Indians;  then  of  the  invo- 
cation to  Bacon  to  lead  the  people,  who  had  no  other 
leader ;  then  of  prominent  events,  political  and  military, 
during  Bacon's  brief  but  most  magnanimous  and  most 
efficient  public  career;  finally  of  his  death,  and  of  the 
futile  efforts  of  a  worthless  fellow  named  Ingram  to  catch 
the  hero's  mantle,  and  to  play  out  the  remainder  of  the 
hero's  part.  The  introductory  sentences  of  the  narrative 
have  perished ;  and  the  story  opens  in  a  broken  way  with 
a  description  of  a  band  of  Indians  besieged  in  some  rude, 
extemporized  fortification  of  theirs,  by  a  half-organized 
army  of  white  men.  The  Indians  "  found  that  their  store 
was  too  short  to  endure  a  long  siege  without  making 
empty  bellies  ;  and  that  empty  bellies  make  weak  hearts. 


74 


HISTORY  OF  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 


which  always  makes  an  unfit  serving  man  to  wait  upon  the 
god  of  war.  Therefore,  they  were  resolved,  before  that 
their  spirits  were  down,  to  do  what  they  could  to  keep 
their  stores  up,  as  opportunities  should  befriend  them  ;  and 
although  they  were  by  the  law  of  arms,  as  the  case  now 
stood,  prohibited  the  hunting  of  wild  deer,  they  resolved 
to  see  what  good  might  be  done  by  hunting  tame  horses; 
which  trade  became  their  sport  so  long  that  those  [white 
men]  who  came  on  horse-back  to  the  siege  began  to  fear 
they  should  be  compelled  to  trot  home  afoot,  and  glad 
if  they  scaped  so  too.  For  these  beleaguered  blades  made 
so  many  sallies,  and  the  besiegers  kept  such  negligent 
guards,  that  there  was  very  few  days  passed  without 
some  remarkable  mischief.  But  what  can  hold  out  always  ? 
Even  stone  walls  yields  to  the  not-to-be-gainsaid  summons 
of  time."  The  narrative  goes  on  to  relate  how,  driven  by 
hunger,  the  besieged  Indians  at  last  sent  out  six  of  their 
chief  men  as  commissioners  to  negotiate  a  peace  with  the 
English ;  and  how  the  latter,  instead  of  negotiating  a 
peace  with  the  commissioners,  knocked  out  their  brains. 
This  unpleasant  reception  was  somewhat  discouraging  to 
the  Indians  in  the  fort,  who  resolved  "  to  forsake  their 
station,  and  not  to  expostulate  the  cause  any  further. 
Having  made  this  resolution,  and  destroyed  all  things  in 
the  fort  that  might  be  serviceable  to  the  English,  they 
boldly,  undiscovered,  slip  through  the  leaguer,  leaving  the 
English  to  prosecute  the  siege,  as  Schogin's  wife  brooded 
the  eggs  that  the  fox  had  sucked."  Thus  the  Indians 
broke  out  of  the  pen  in  which  they  had  been  rather  care- 
lessly  cooped  up,  and  fled  away  to  their  forests ;  but  they 
fled  away  only  to  return  again  at  their  pleasure,  and  in 
larger  force,  and  to  swoop  down  with  unsparing  havoc 
upon  every  white  settlement  that  they  could  find  unpro. 
tected.  In  this  hour  of  extreme  danger,  the  people  called 
Nathaniel  Bacon  to  be  their  leader,  a  man  endeared  to 
them  not  so  much  for  what  "  he  had  yet  done  as  the  cause 
of  their  affections,"  as  for  "  what  they  expected  he  would 


BUR  WELL  PAPERS 


75 


do  to  deserve  their  devotion  ;  while  with  no  common  zeal 
they  send  up  their  reiterated  prayers,  first  to  himself  and 
next  to  heaven,  that  he  may  become  their  guardian  angel, 
to  protect  them  from  the  cruelties  of  the  Indians,  against 
whom  this  gentleman  had  a  perfect  antipathy." 

An  account  is  then  given  at  some  length  of  the  ener. 
getic  measures  taken  by  Bacon  against  the  Indians,  of  the 
anger  of  the  governor  against  him,  and  of  the  adroitness 
with  which  the  parasites  of  the  governor  devised  means  to 
inflame  his  anger  more  and  more.  "  They  began  .  . 
to  have  Bacon's  merits  in  mistrust,  as  a  luminary  that 
threatened  an  eclipse  to  their  rising  glories ;  for  though 
he  was  but  a  young  man,  yet  they  found  that  he  was 
master  and  owner  of  those  induements  which  constitute 
a  complete  man."  Meanwhile  Bacon  himself  fell  upon 
the  Indians  "  with  abundance  of  resolution  and  gallantry 
.  .  .  in  their  fastness,  killing  a  great  many  and  blow- 
ing up  their  magazine  of  arms  and  powder ;  "  though  pro- 
claimed a  rebel  he  then  returned  home ;  was  elected  mem- 
ber of  the  colonial  assembly ;  was  taken  prisoner  by  the 
governor,  and  brought  to  trial  upon  the  charge  of  rebel- 
lion. He  was,  however,  "  not  only  acquitted  and  pardoned 
all  misdemeanors,  but  restored  to  the  council-table,"  and 
was  likewise  promised  a  commission  "as  general  for  the 
Indian  war  to  the  universal  satisfaction  of  the  people  who 
passionately  desired  the  same.  .  .  .  And  here  who  can 
do  less  than  wonder  at  the  mutable  and  impermanent 
deportments  of  that  blind  goddess,  Fortune,  who  in  the 
morning  loads  man  with  disgraces  and  ere  night  crowns 
him  with  honors,  sometimes  depressing  and  again  elevat- 
ing, as  her  fickle  humor  is  to  smile  or  frown.  .  .  .  For 
in  the  morning,  before  his  trial,  he  was  in  his  enemies' 
hopes  and  his  friends'  fears,  judged  for  to  receive  the 
guerdon  due  to  a  rebel ;  .  .  .  and  ere  night,  crowned 
the  darling  of  the  people's  hopes  and  desires,  as  the  only 
man  fit  in  Virginia  to  put  a  stop  unto  the  bloody  resolu- 
tions of  the  heathen.  And  yet  again,  as  a  fuller  manifesta- 


76  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITER  A  TURE. 

tion  of  Fortune's  inconstancy,  within  two  or  three  days 
the  people's  hopes  and  his  desires  were  both  frustrated  by 
the  governor's  refusing  to  sign  the  promised  commission." 
Upon  this,  Bacon  determined  no  longer  to  be  trifled  with, 
and  hurried  once  more  to  the  capital  at  the  head  of  five 
hundred  men  in  arms.  His  demand  for  a  commission, 
backed  up  by  such  logic,  could  not  be  refused ;  but  he  had 
no  sooner  got  it  and  got  out  of  sight  with  it,  on  his  way  to 
fight  the  Indians,  than  this  fine  old  governor  mustered  up 
courage  still  again  to  proclaim  the  young  hero  a  rebel. 
"  The  noise  of  which  proclamation  .  .  .  soon  reached 
the  general's  ears  not  yet  stopped  up  from  listening  to  ap- 
parent dangers.  This  strange  and  unexpected  news  put 
him  and  some  with  him  shrewdly  to  their  trumps.  .  .  . 
It  vexed  him  to  the  heart,  as  he  was  heard  to  say,  for 
to  think  that  while  he  was  a-hunting  wolves,  tigers,  and 
foxes,  which  daily  destroyed  our  harmless  sheep  and 
lambs,  he  and  those  with  him  should  be  pursued  in  the 
rear  with  a  full  cry,  as  a  more  savage  or  no  less  ravenous 
beast."  The  story  is  then  told  of  the  difficult  part  that 
Bacon  had  to  play,  with  one  arm  keeping  back  the  Indians 
from  murdering  the  people,  and  with  the  other  keeping 
back  the  governor  from  murdering  him.  His  white  ene- 
mies never  dared  to  confront  him  upon  the  open  field  ; 
and  even  in  a  campaign  of  stratagem,  they  found  him 
more  than  a  match  for  them.  Of  his  ability  to  cope  with 
them  in  craft  as  well  as  in  force,  one  amusing  incident  is 
given.  On  learning  that  he  had  once  more  been  treated 
with  perfidy  by  the  governor  and  had  been  proclaimed  a 
rebel  in  spite  of  his  commission,  Bacon,  "  with  a  marvel- 
lous celerity,  outstripping  the  swift  wings  of  fame,"  pushed 
back  to  Jamestown,  and  in  a  trice  blocked  up  the  governor 
there,  "  to  the  general  astonishment  of  the  whole  country, 
especially  when  that  Bacon's  numbers  was  known,  which 
at  this  time  did  not  exceed  above  a  hundred  and  fifty. 
.  .  .  Yet  not  knowing  but  that  the  paucity  of  his  num- 
bers being  once  known  to  those  in  town,  it  might  raise 


BUR  WELL  PAPERS. 


77 


their  hearts  to  a  degree  of  courage,  having  so  much  the 
odds,  ...  he  thought  it  not  amiss,  since  the  lion's 
strength  was  too  weak,  to  strengthen  the  same  with  the 
fox's  brains.  .  .  .  For  immediately  he  despatcheth  two 
or  three  parties  of  horse,  ...  to  bring  into  the  camp 
some  of  the  prime  gentlewomen  whose  husbands  were  in 
town  ;  where,  when  arrived,  he  sends  one  of  them  to  in- 
form  her  own  and  the  others'  husbands,  for  what  purposes 
he  had  brought  them  into  the  camp,  namely,  to  be  placed 
in  the  forefront  of  his  men,  at  such  time  as  those  in  town 
should  sally  forth  upon  him.  The  poor  gentlewomen  were 
mightily  astonished  at  this  project,  neither  were  their  hus- 
bands void  of  amazements  at  this  subtle  invention.  If 
Mr.  Fuller  thought  it  strange  that  the  Devil's  black  guard 
should  be  enrolled  God's  soldiers,  they  made  it  no  less 
wonderful  that  their  innocent  and  harmless  wives  should 
thus  be  entered  a  white  guard  to  the  Devil.  This  action 
was  a  method  in  war  that  they  were  not  well  acquainted 
with,  .  .  .  that  before  they  could  come  to  pierce  their 
enemies'  sides,  they  must  be  obliged  to  dart  their  weap- 
ons through  their  wives'  breast.  .  .  .  Whether  it  was 
these  considerations  or  some  others,  I  do  not  know,  that 
kept  their  swords  in  their  scabbards;  but  this  is  manifest, 
that  Bacon  knit  more  knots  by  his  own  head  in  one  day 
than  all  the  hands  in  town  was  able  to  untie  in  a  whole 
week ;  while  these  ladies'  white  aprons  became  of  greater 
force  to  keep  the  besieged  from  sallying  out  than  his 
works — a  pitiful  trench — had  strength  to  repel  the  weakest 
shot  that  should  have  been  sent  into  his  leaguer,  had  he 
not  made  use  of  this  invention." 

But  through  all  that  terrible  summer  of  1676,  events 
trod  upon  one  another's  heels ;  and  by  the  first  of  October 
the  chief  actor  in  them  suddenly  died — broken  down,  as 
many  believed,  by  exposure,  anxiety,  and  fatigue ;  or,  as 
others  suspected,  taken  off  by  poison.  The  old  manu- 
script tells  of  the  event  in  characteristic  military  meta- 
phor :  •'  Bacon  having  for  some  time  been  besieged  by 


^g  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

sickness,  and  now  not  able  to  hold  out  any  longer,  all  his 
strength  and  provisions  being  spent,  surrendered  up  that 
fort  he  was  no  longer  able  to  keep,  into  the  hands  of  that 
grim  and  all-conquering  captain,  Death." 

As  the  cause  of  his  death  was  a  mystery,  so  a  mystery 
covered  even  the  place  of  his  burial ;  for  his  friends,  desir- 
ing to  save  his  lifeless  body  from  violation  at  the  hands  of 
the  victorious  party,  placed  it  secretly  in  the  earth ;  "  but 
where  deposited,"  says  the  old  manuscript,  "  till  the  Gen- 
eral Day,  not  known  only  to  those  who  are  resolutely 
silent  in  that  particular."  And  the  love  of  Bacon's  fol- 
lowers, which  in  his  lifetime  had  shown  itself  in  services 
of  passionate  devotion,  and  which,  after  his  death,  thus 
hovered  as  a  protecting  silence  over  his  hidden  grave, 
found  expression  also  in  some  sorrowing  verses  that,  upon 
the  whole,  are  of  astonishing  poetic  merit.  Who  may 
have  been  the  author  of  these  verses,  it  is  perhaps  now 
impossible  to  discover.  They  are  prefaced  by  the  quaint 
remark  that  after  Bacon  "  was  dead,  he  was  bemoaned  in 
these  following  lines,  drawn  by  the  man  that  waited  upon 
his  person  as  it  is  said,  and  who  attended  his  corpse  to 
their  burial  place."  Of  course  this  statement  is  but  a  blind : 
the  author  of  such  a  eulogy  of  the  dead  rebel  could  not 
safely  avow  himself.  But  certainly  no  menial  of  Bacon's, 
no  mere  "man  that  waited  upon  his  person,"  could  have 
written  this  noble  dirge,  which  has  a  stateliness,  a  com- 
pressed energy,  and  a  mournful  eloquence,  reminding  one 
of  the  commemorative  verse  of  Ben  Jonson. 

"  Death,  why  so  cruel  ?     What  !  no  other  way 
To  manifest  thy  spleen,  but  thus  to  slay 
Our  hopes  of  safety,  liberty,  our  all, 
Which,  through  thy  tyranny,  with  him  must  fall 
To  its  late  chaos  ?     Had  thy  rigid  force 
Been  dealt  by  retail,  and  not  thus  in  gross, 
Grief  had  been  silent.     Now,  we  must  complain, 
Since  thou  in  him  hast  more  than  thousands  slain; 
Whose  lives  and  safeties  did  so  much  depend 
On  him  their  life,  with  him  their  lives  must  end. 


BUR  WELL  PAPERS. 

If 't  be  a  sin  to  think  Death  bribed  can  be, 

We  must  be  guilty  ;  say  't  was  bribery 

Guided  the  fatal  shaft.     Virginia's  foes, 

To  whom  for  secret  crimes  just  vengeance  owes 

Deserved  plagues,  dreading  their  just  desert. 

Corrupted  Death  by  i'aracelsian  art 

Him  to  destroy  ;  whose  well-tried  courage  such, 

Their  heartless  hearts,  nor  arms,  nor  strength  could  touch. 

Who  now  must  heal  those  wounds,  or  stop  that  blood 

The  heathen  made,  and  drew  into  a  flood  ? 

Who  is  't  must  plead  our  cause  ?     Nor  trump,  nor  drum. 

Nor  deputations  ;  these,  alas,  are  dumb. 

And  cannot  speak.     Our  arms — though  ne'er  so  strong— 

Will  want  the  aid  of  his  commanding  tongue, 

Which  conquered  more  than  Csesar  :  he  o'erthrew 

Only  the  outward  frame ;  this  could  subdue 

The  rugged  works  of  nature.     Souls  replete 

With  dull  chill  cold,  he'd  animate  with  heat 

Drawn  forth  of  reason's  lymbic.     In  a  word 

Mars  and  Minerva  both  in  him  concurred 

For  arts,  for  arms,  whose  pen  and  sword  alike, 

As  Cato's  did.  may  admiration  strike 

Into  his  foes  ;  while  they  confess  withal, 

It  was  their  guilt  styled  him  a  criminal. 

Only  this  difference  doth  from  truth  proceed, 

They  in  the  guilt,  he  in  the  name,  must  bleed; 

While  none  shall  dare  his  obsequies  to  sing 

In  deserved  measures,  until  Time  shall  bring 

Truth  crowned  with  freedom,  and  from  danger  free; 

To  sound  his  praises  to  posterity. 

Here  let  him  rest ;  while  we  this  truth  report. 
He's  gone  from  hence  unto  a  higher  court, 
To  plead  his  cause,  where  he  by  this  doth  know 
Whether  to  Caesar  he  was  friend  or  foe." ' 


1  This  poem  and  all  the  foregoing  prose  quotations  relating  to  Bacon, 
are  cited  from  the  printed  copy  of  them  given  in  2  Mass.  Hist.  Soc. 
Coll.  I.  27-62  ;  but  as  that  copy  was  very  inaccurately  made,  I  have  cor- 
rected my  quotations  by  collating  them  with  the  perfect  copy  subsequently 
printed  by  the  same  society.  See  their  "Proceedings"  for  1866-1867. 
The  authorship  of  these  interesting  manuscripts  is  still  a  matter  of  conjec- 
ture. My  own  opinion  is  that  they  were  written  by  one  Cotton,  of  Acquia 


gO  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITER  A  TURE. 

Who  was  there  in  Virginia  two  hundred  years  ago  with 
the  genius  and  the  literary  practice  to  write  these  mas- 
terly verses?  They  alone  shed  splendor  upon  the  intel- 
lectual  annals  of  Virginia  for  the  seventeenth  century.  If 
much  of  that  century  was  for  her  a  literary  desert,  these 
verses  form  a  delightful  oasis  in  it. 

IV. 

During  the  first  epoch  in  the  history  of  American  litera- 
ture, there  were  but  two  localities  which  produced  in  the 
English  language  anything  that  can  be  called  literature, 
— Virginia  and  New  England.  We  have  now  inspected 
whatever  literature  sprang  up  in  Virginia  in  the  course  of 
that  period  ;  and  before  passing  to  the  investigation  of  the 
literature  of  New  England  for  the  same  time,  we  need  to 
stop  and  review  the  ground  we  have  already  traversed, 
and  gather,  if  we  may,  the  choicest  fruit  to  be  had  from 
studies  like  these. 

'  As  we  have  seen,  there  were  in  Virginia,  during  the 
first  twenty  years  of  its  existence,  as  many  as  six  au- 
thors who  there  produced  writings  that  live  yet  and  de- 
serve to  live.  But  at  the  end  of  that  period  and  for  the 
remainder  of  the  century,  nearly  all  literary  activity  in 
Virginia  ceased ;  the  only  exception  to  this  statement  be- 
ing the  brief  anonymous  literary  memorials  which  have 
come  down  to  us  from  the  wrathful  and  calamitous  upris- 
ing of  the  people  under  Nathaniel  Bacon.  Even  of  those 
six  writers  of  the  first  two  decades,  all  excepting  one, 
Alexander  Whitaker,  flitted  back  to  England  after  a  brief 
residence  in  Virginia  :  so  that  besides  Whitaker,  the  colony 
had  during  all  that  period  no  writer  who  gave  his  name  to 
her  as  being  willing  to  identify  himself  permanently  with 


Creek,  husband  of  Ann  Cotton,  and  author  of  a  letter  written  from  James- 
town, June  9,  1676,  printed  in  Force,  Hist.  Tracts,  I.  No.  9.  For  thii 
opinion,  which  I  suppose  to  be  new,  the  reasons  cannot  be  given  here. 


THL  FIRST  VIRGINIANS.  gl 

her  fate,  and  to  live  and  die  in  her  immediate  service. 
This,  as  we  shall  see  in  our  further  studies,  is  in  startling 
contrast  to  the  contemporaneous  record  of  New  England, 
which,  even  in  that  early  period,  had  a  great  throng  of 
writers,  nearly  all  of  whom  took  root  in  her  soil. 

These,  then,  are  the  salient  facts  in  the  early  literary 
history  of  Virginia.  They  are  certainly  very  remarkable 
facts.  How  do  we  account  for  them  ? 

First  of  all,  we  need  to  ask,  who  were  the  people  who 
during  that  great  epoch  founded  the  Old  Dominion  of 
Virginia?  What  sort  of  people  were  they?  Of  what  tex- 
ture of  body  and  brain  and  spirit  ?  What  were  they  as 
regards  industry,  enterprise,  thrift  ?  What  were  their 
predominant  notions  concerning  church  and  state  ?  Es- 
pecially, what  did  they  come  to  America  for?  And  what 
were  they  living  for,  principally,  whether  in  America  or 
anywhere  else?  If  we  can  work  out  for  ourselves  the  true 
answers  to  these  questions,  we  shall  be  able  to  see  why  we 
might  expect  to  get  out  of  the  people  of  Virginia,  during 
the  seventeenth  century  and  afterward,  no  great  amount 
of  literature :  hospitality,  courtly  manners,  military  leader- 
ship, political  acumen,  statesmanship,  but  not  many  books. 

A  foolish  boast  still  floats  on  the  current  of  talk,  to  the 
effect  that  Virginia  was  originally  populated  to  a  large 
extent  by  families  of  wealth  and  of  aristocratic  rank  in 
England.  On  the  other  hand  a  cruel  taunt  is  sometimes 
heard  in  response  to  this  boast,  to  the  effect  that  the  first 
families  of  Virginia  have  really  sprung  from  the  loins  of 
bastards,  bankrupts,  fugitives,  transported  criminals,  and 
other  equivocal  Englishmen,  who  in  the  seventeenth  cen- 
tury left  their  country  for  their  country's  good.  The 
truth  seems  to  lie  in  neither  of  these  statements  alone, 
but  in  both  of  them  mixed  together  and  mutually  modi- 
fied. For  the  first  forty  years  the  larger  portion  of  the 
settlers  in  Virginia  were  of  inferior  quality,  personally  and 
socially :  many  of  them  were  tramps  from  the  pavements 
of  London ;  vagrants  who  wandered  to  Virginia  because 


82  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

they  had  to  wander  somewhere  ;  gentlemen  of  fashion  who 
were  out  at  the  elbow  ;  aristocrats  gone  to  seed  ;  " '  broken 
men,'  adventurers,  bankrupts,  criminals."1  Indeed,  for 
some  time  after  the  first  few  ship-loads  had  gone  out  to 
Virginia,  and  the  news  had  come  back  to  England  of  the 
perils  and  distresses  that  the  colonists  were  fallen  into, 
not  even  paupers  and  knaves  would  any  longer  go  there  of 
their  own  accord,  and  the  company  in  London  became 
"  humble  suitors  to  his  Majesty"  to  compel  "vagabonds 
and  condemned  men  to  go  thither.  Nay,  .  .  .  some 
did  choose  to  be  hanged  before  they  would  go> thither,  and 
were."2  In  the  year  1611,  Sir  Thomas  Dale  sailed  out  to 
Virginia  with  three  hundred  emigrants,  whom,  to  use  his 
own  words,  he  gathered  "  in  riotous,  lazy,  and  infected 
places :  such  disordered  persons,  so  profane,  so  riotous, 
so  full  of  mutiny  and  treasonable  intcndments,  that  in  a 
parcel  of  three  hundred  not  many  gave  testimony,  be- 
side their  names,  that  they  were  Christians ;  and  besides, 
were  of  such  diseased  and  crazed  bodies  that  the  sea- 
voyage  hither  and  the  climate  here,  but  a  little  scratch- 
ing them,  render  them  so  unable,  faint,  and  desperate 
of  recovery,  that  .  .  .  not  three  score  may  be  em- 
ployed upon  any  labor  or  service."8  But  by  the  year 
1617,  and  thenceforward  for  many  years,  the  cultivation 
V  of  tobacco  in  Virginia  became  so  profitable  that  the  labor 
even  of  English  convicts  was  welcome ;  and  they  were  ac- 
cordingly transported  thither  in  large  numbers  and  became 
gradually  merged  in  the  general  population  of  the  country. 
In  1619,  the  first  negro  slaves  were  imported  into  the 
colony;' and  thereafter  their  presence  contributed  anew 
element  of  prosperity  and  of  woe  to  Virginia.  From  about 
the  year  1640  to  the  year  1660,  that  is  during  the  period 
of  the  civil  war  and  of  the  commonwealth  in  England, 


1  J.  R.  Green,  "  A  Short  Hist,  of  the  English  People,"  Harper's  ed.  498 
1  Capt.  J.  Smith,  "  Gen.  Hist."  in  Pinkerton,  XIII.  240. 
•  Aspinwall  Papers,  4  Mass.  Hist.  Coll.  IX.  i.  note. 


THE  I  IRST  VIRGINIANS.  83 

many  persons  of  much  finer  and  stronger  quality  emigrated 
to  Virginia  ;  men  of  force  and  weight  in  England,  church- 
men, cavaliers,  who,  especially  when  the  cause  of  the  king 
became  hopeless,  very  naturally  moved  away  to  Virginia 
to  find  there  a  permanent  home,  and  a  refuge  from  the 
odious  ascendency  of  Cromwell  and  his  Puritans.  At  the 
restoration  in  1660,  still  another  class  of  emigrants,  also 
forceful  and  worthy,  passed  over  to  Virginia,  men  of  the 
Cromwellian  party,  a  few  even  of  his  iron-sided  troopers, 
who  did  not  care  to  abide  in  sight  of  the  jubilant  cavaliers, 
and  who  chose  Virginia  in  preference  to  New  England,  on 
account  of  its  more  genial  climate.  Moreover,  long  be- 
fore the  close  of  the  seventeenth  century,  Virginia  had 
placed  severe  restrictions  upon  the  importation  of  mal- 
efactors into  the  colony.  Of  course,  from  the  first  these 
colonists,  whether  of  weak  type  or  strong,  were  mostly  of 
the  party  of  the  English  church,  and  of  royalist  views  in 
politics.  Unlike  the  first  colonists  in  New  England,  they 
had  no  dispute  with  the  established  order  of  things  in  old 
England  ;  and  made  Virginia,  not  a  digression  from  Eng- 
lish society,  but,  as  George  Bancroft  happily  describes  it, 
"  a  continuation  of  English  society."  l  As  compared  with 
the  people  of  New  England,  they  of  Virginia  were  less 
austere,  less  enterprising,  less  industrious,  more  worldly, 
more  self-indulgent ;  they  were  impatient  of  asceticism, 
of  cant,  of  long  faces,  of  long  prayers ;  they  rejoiced  in 
games,  sports,  dances,  merry  music,  and  in  a  free,  jovial, 
roistering  life. 

In  close  connection  with  this  study  of  the  people  who 
in  our  earliest  age  came  to  Virginia,  we  need  to  observe 
the  most  characteristic  features  of  the  social  organiza- 
tion that  they  formed  after  they  got  there.  Though  they 
were  of  the  same  stock  and  speech  as  the  founders  of 
New  England,  in  ideas  they  were  very  different ;  and  at 
once  proceeding  to  incarnate  their  ideas  in  the  visible 

'  Bancroft,  "  Hist.  U.S."  II.  190. 


g4  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

frame  of  society,  they  erected  in  Virginia  a  fabric  of 
church  and  state  which  was  of  course  a  veracious  ex- 
pression of  themselves,  and  which  presents  an  almost  per- 
fect antithesis  to  the  fabric  of  church  and  state  which  at 
about  the  same  time  began  to  be  erected  in  New  England. 
The  germ  of  the  whole  difference  between  them  lay  in 
their  different  notions  concerning  the  value  of  vicinity 
among  the  units  of  society.  The  founders  of  New  Eng- 
land were  inclined  to  settle  in  groups  of  families  forming 
neighborhoods,  villages,  and  at  last  cities ;  from  which  it 
resulted  that  among  them  there  was  a  constant  play  of 
mind  upon  mind  ;  mutual  stimulation,  mutual  forbearance 
also ;  likewise  an  easier  and  more  frequent  reciprocation 
of  the  social  forces  and  benefits ;  facility  in  conducting 
the  various  industries  and  trades ;  facility  in  maintaining 
churches,  schools,  and  higher  literary  organizations ;  facility 
in  the  interchange  of  books,  letters-,'  and  the  like.  The 
course  chosen  by  the  founders  of  Virginia  was  precisely 
the  opposite  of  this :  they  were  inclined  to  settle  not  in 
groups  of  families  forming  neighborhoods,  but  in  detached 
establishments  forming  individualized  domestic  centres. 
They  brought  with  them,  as  a  type  of  the  highest  human 
felicity,  the  memory  of  the  English  territorial  lord,  seated 
proudly  in  his  own  castle,  breasting  back  all  human  inter- 
ference by  miles  and  miles  of  his  own  land,  which  lay 
outspread  in  all  directions  from  the  view  of  his  castle- 
windows.  Their  ambition  was  to  become  territorial  lords 
in  Virginia;  to  own  vast  tracts  of  land,  even  though  unim- 
proved ;  to  set  up  imitations — crude  and  cheap  imitations 
they  necessarily  were — of  the  vast  and  superb  baronial 
establishments  which  they  had  gazed  at  in  the  mother- 
country.  And  many  things  united  to  favor  them  in  this 
wish.  It  was  extremely  easy  to  get  large  tracts  of  land  in 
Virginia.  Every  settler  received  at  the  outset  a  king's 
grant  of  fifty  acres  for  himself  and  for  each  person  trans- 
ported by  him  to  Virginia ;  and  in  addition  to  this,  by  a 
fee  of  a  few  shillings  to  a  clerk  in  the  secretary's  office, 


THE  FIRST  VIRGINIANS.  85 

grants  could  be  accumulated  upon  grants.1  Moreover 
Virginia  is  veined  by  a  multitude  of  navigable  rivers ;  so 
that  every  man  who  wished  to  segregate  himself  in  his 
own  mansion,  amid  a  vast  territorial  solitude,  needed  not 
to  wait  for  the  construction  of  a  public  road  to  enable  him 
to  get  to  it,  and  occasionally  to  get  from  it ;  but  by  erect- 
ing his  house  near  to  a  river  bank,  he  could  find  almost  at 
his  door  a  convenient  shipping-point  for  the  productions  of 
his  farm,  and  a  convenient  means  of  ingress  and  egress  for 
himself  and  his  friends.  Thus,  from  the  first,  while  the 
social  structure  of  New  England  was  that  of  concentration, 
the  social  structure  of  Virginia  was  that  of  dispersion.  The 
one  sought  personal  community,  the  other  domestic  iso- 
lation :  the  one  developed  cooperation  in  civil  affairs,  in 
mechanism,  in  trade,  in  culture,  in  religion ;  the  other 
developed  solitary  action  in  all  these,  and  consequently 
made  but  little  progress  in  any  of  them:  the  one  tended 
to  mitigate  individualism  by  a  thousand  social  compro- 
mises; the  other  tended  to  stimulate  individualism  through 
an  indulgence  of  it  untempcred  by  any  adequate  colliding 
personal  force.  Let  any  one  cast  his  eye  on  a  map  of 
Virginia  for  the  seventeenth  century.  He  will  find  local 
names  on  that  map ;  but  those  local  names  do  not  indicate 
cities,  or  even  villages,  but  merely  theoretic  organizations 
of  church  and  state — parishes,  over  which  the  inhabitants 
were  so  widely  scattered  that  no  man  could  have  seen  his 
neighbor  without  looking  through  a  telescope,  or  be  heard 
by  him  without  firing  off  a  gun.  George  Bancroft  does 
not  exaggerate  when,  in  speaking  of  Virginia  for  the  latter 
part  of  the  seventeenth  century,  he  says,  "There  was 
hardly  such  a  sight  as  a  cluster  of  three  dwellings." l  Even 
Jamestown,  the  capital,  had  but  a  state-house,  one  church, 
and  eighteen  private  houses. 


1  C.  Campbell.  "  Hiit.  Va."  350.    Al»  "  Virginia'^  Cure."  1662,  in  Force 
Hist.  Tracts.  III.  No.  15,  8. 
»  Bancroft.  "  Hut.  U.  S."  IL  aia. 


36  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITER  A  TURE. 

Since  the  units  of  this  dispersed  community  inclined 
thus  to  isolation  rather  than  to  close  fellowship,  it  followed 
that  all  those  public  tasks  which  depend  on  cooperation 
were  ill  done,  or  not  done  at  all :  the  making  of  high 
roads,  bridges  ;  the  erection  of  court-houses,  school-houses, 
churches ;  the  promotion  of  commercial  and  manufactur- 
ing establishments ;  postal  communication;  literary  inter- 
changes, the  involuntary  traffic  of  ideas.  In  short,  the 
tendency  of  the  social  structure  in  Virginia  was  from  the 
first  toward  a  sort  of  rough  extemporaneous  feudalism, 
toward  the  grandeur  and  the  weakness  of  the  patriarchal 
state,  rather  than  toward  those  complex,  elaborate,  and 
refined  results  which  are  the  achievements  of  an  advanced 
modern  civilization,  and  which  can  be  procured  only  by 
the  units  of  society  pulling  together,  instead  of  pulling 
apart.  There  was  considerable  individual  prosperity :  there 
was  no  public  thrift.  Manual  labor  was  of  course  scorned 
by  the  man  who  owned  slaves,  and  was  the  master  of  a 
baronial  hall  with  its  far-stretching  empire  of  wild  lands. 
From  him  likewise  descended  to  his  inferiors  the  senti- 
ment of  contempt  for  labor, — the  notion  that  labor  was 
not  any  man's  glory,  but  his  shame.  Their  earliest  his- 
torian born  in  Virginia,  Robert  Beverley,  himself  of  a  dis- 
tinguished Virginian  family,  writing  just  at  the  dawn  of 
the  eighteenth  century,  fills  his  book  with  sarcasms  at 
the  indolence  and  shiftlessness  of  his  fellow-countrymen. 
Naming  Virginia,  he  says :  "  I  confess  I  am  ashamed  to 
say  anything  of  its  improvements,  because  I  must  at  the 
same  time  reproach  my  countrymen  with  a  laziness  that 
is  unpardonable."1  "They  are  such  abominable  ill-hus- 
bands,2 that  though  their  country  be  overrun  with  wood, 
yet  they  have  all  their  wooden  ware  from  England — their 
cabinets,  chairs,  tables,  stools,  chests,  boxes,  cart-wheels, 
and  all  other  things,  even  so  much  as  their  bowls  and 

1  Beverley,  "  Hist.  Va."  Book  IV.  59. 
8  i.  e.,  bad  economists. 


EDUCATION  IN  VIRGINIA.  87 

birchen  brooms,  to  the  eternal  reproach  of  their  laziness." ! 
"  Thus  they  depend  altogether  upon  the  liberality  of  na- 
ture, without  endeavoring  to  improve  its  gifts  by  art  or 
industry.  They  sponge  upon  the  blessings  of  a  warm  sun 
and  a  fruitful  soil,  and  almost  grutch  the  pains  of  gather- 
ing in  the  bounties  of  the  earth."1 

The  dispersed  social  organization  of  Virginia  had  effects 
as  evil  in  the  direction  of  religious  institutions,  as  in  the 
direction  of  material  enterprise  and  thrift.  "The  Vir- 
ginia parishes,"  says  Charles  Campbell,  "  were  so  extensive 
that  parishioners  sometimes  lived  at  the  distance  of  fifty 
miles  from  the  parish  church ; "  hence, "  paganism,  atheism, 
or  sectaries."  * 

But  the  result  which  immediately  concerns  us  in  our 
present  studies  has  to  do  with  the  intellectual  develop- 
ment of  the  people.  First  of  all,  then,  in  those  highly 
rarefied  communities,  where  almost  nothing  was  in  com- 
mon, how  could  there  be  common  schools?4  To  have 
included  within  a  school-district  a  sufficient  number  of 
families  to  constitute  a  school,  the  distances  for  many  of 
the  pupils  would  have  been  so  great  as  to  render  attend- 
ance impracticable.  Fqrjhe  first  three  jjenejrations_there 
were,  almost  no  schools  at  all  in  Virginia.  The  historian 
Burk  says  that  "until  the  year  1688  no  mention  is  any- 
where made  in  the  records,  of  schools  or  of  any  provision 
for  the  instruction  of  youth."5  Who  can  wonder  that 
under  such  circumstances  the  children  in  most  cases  grew 
up  in  ignorance ;  and  that  the  historian  Campbell  should 
be  obliged  to  testify  that  the  first  and  second  generations 


'  Beyerley,  -  Hist.  Va."  Book  IV.  58. 
»  Ibid.  83. 

•  "  Hist.  Va."  388.     Also  "  Va.'s  Cure,"  in  Force,  III.  No.  15,  4,  5. 
4  ••  Va.'*  Core,"  in  Force,  Hist.  Trmcts,  III.  No.  15,  6. 

*  "  Hist.  Va."  II.  Appendix,  xxxi.    But  the  author  of  "  A  Perfect  Descrip. 
of  Va.,M  A.  D.   1648,  mentions  "a  free  school  and  other  petty  schools." 
Force.  Hist.  Tracts,  II.  No.  8.  13. 


gg  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITER  A  TURE. 

of  those  born  in  Virginia  were  inferior  in  knowledge  to 
their  ancestors?1 

If  primary  education  was  so  grossly  neglected  in  Vir- 
ginia during  the  seventeenth  century,  we  hardly  need  to 
ask  what  could  have  been  the  condition  of  higher  educa- 
tion there  during  the  same  period.  Near  the  end  of  this 
century,  when  all  English-speaking  communities  were 
finally  delivered  from  the  Stuart  incubus,  and  when  all 
those  communities  on  both  sides  of  the  ocean  seemed 
to  take  a  fresh  start  toward  nobler  things  in  civilization, 
we  find  traces  of  an  educational  awakening  in  Virginia. 
Among  other  traces  of  this  awakening  was  the  suggestion 
of  a  college,  which  in  1692  took  tangible  form  in  the 
establishment  of  the  institution  named  in  honor  of  the 
monarchs,  William  and  Mary.  In  the  eighteenth  century 
this  college  did  much  to  stimulate  and  guide  the  intel- 
lectual life  of  the  colony ;  but  we  must  not  be  misled  by 
its  imposing  name.  It  was  called  a  college  ;  but  during 
its  earlier  years  it  was  only  a  boarding-school  for  very 
young  boys  in  very  rudimental  studies. 

Thus  it  must  be  seen  that  Virginia  in  the  seventeenth 
century  was  entitled  to  the  description  which  Sir  Philip 
Sidney  gave  to  Ireland  in  the  sixteenth  century, — a  place 
"where  truly  learning  goeth  very  bare."a  Indeed,  so  late 
as  the  year  1715,  Governor  Spotswood  dissolved  the  colo- 
nial assembly  of  Virginia  with  this  taunt  upon  the  edu- 
cational defects  of  a  body  composed  of  their  principal 
gentry :  "  I  observe  that  the  grand  ruling  party  in  your 
house  has  not  furnished  chairmen  of  two  of  your  standing 
committees  who  can  spell  English  or  write  common  sense, 
as  the  grievances  under  their  own  handwriting  will  mani- 
fest."8 

It  must  not  be  supposed  that  the  people  of  Virginia 
were  generally  indifferent  to  the  intellectual  disadvan- 


1  "  Hist.  Va."  352.  •  "  Apologie  for  Poetrie,"  Arber's  ed.  82. 

1  C.  Campbell,  "  Hist.  Va."  395. 


EDUCATION  IN  VIRGINIA.  89 

tages  accruing  to  them  from  their  peculiar  social  organiza- 
tion. Especially  did  they  grieve  over  the  lack  of  educa- 
tional privileges  for  their  children  ;  and  from  time  to  time 
they  suggested  methods  for  the  establishment  of  accessible 
public  schools.  But  they  were  in  the  gripe  of  hostile 
circumstances,  and  all  their  efforts  were  for  that  day  vain. 
Besides,  during  a  large  portion  of  the  seventeenth  century, 
they  had  the  affliction  of  a  royal  governor,  Sir  William 
Berkeley,  who  threw  the  whole  weight  of  his  office  and 
the  whole  energy  of  his  despotic  will  in  favor  of  the  fine 
old  conservative  policy  of  keeping  subjects  ignorant  in 
order  to  keep  them  submissive.  This  policy,  which  he 
most  consistently  maintained  throughout  his  entire  admin- 
istration, from  1641  to  1677,  was  frankly  avowed  by  him 
in  his  celebrated  reply  to  the  English  commissioners  who 
in  1670  questioned  him  concerning  the  condition  of  Vir- 
ginia :  "  I  thank  God  there  are  no  free  schools,  nor  print- 
ing ;  and  I  hope  we  shall  not  have,  these  hundred  years ; 
for  learning  has  brought  disobedience,  and  heresy,  and  sects 
into  the  world,  and  printing  has  divulged  them,  and  libels 
against  the  best  government.  God  keep  us  from  both."1 
We  owe  to  Sir  William  the  meed  of  our  cordial  acknowl- 
edgment that  at  least  in  this  article  of  his  creed  he  never 
failed  to  show  his  faith  by  his  works,  and  that  he  did  his 
best  while  governor  of  Virginia  to  secure  the  answer  of 
his  own  dark  prayer.  And  unfortunately  when  he  was 
recalled  from  Virginia,  his  policy  for  the  encouragement 
of  popular  ignorance  was  not  recalled  with  him :  on  the 
contrary  it  was  continued  by  the  government  at  home, 
and  was  prescribed  in  the  official  instructions  laid  upon 
his  successors.  There  is  no  record  of  a  printing-press  in 
Virginia  earlier  than  1681  ;  and  soon  after  a  printing- 
press  was  set  up,  the  printer  was  summoned  before  Lord 
Culpepper  and  required  to  enter  into  bonds  "  not  to  print 
anything  hereafter,  until  his  majesty's  pleasure  shall  be 

1  Heniog,  II.  511. 


00  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

known," 1 — a  gracious  way  of  intimating  a  perpetual  pro- 
hibition.  In  1683,  when  Lord  Effingham  came  out  as 
governor  of  Virginia,  he  received  from  the  ministry  instruc- 
tions "  to  allow  no  person  to  use  a  printing-press  on  any 
occasion  whatsoever."2  From  that  date  onward  till  about 
the  year  1729,  no  printing  was  done  in  Virginia;  and 
from  1729  until  ten  years  before  the  Declaration  of  Inde- 
pendence, Virginia  had  but  one  printing-house,  and  even 
that  "  was  thought  to  be  too  much  under  the  control  of 
the  governor."3  What  a  base  extremity  of  intolerance! 
And  how  base  the  popular  listlessness  which  could  permit 
it !  In  other  countries  it  has  been  thought  hard  enough 
to  have  the  printing-press  clogged  by  the  interference  of 
official  licensers  and  spies ;  in  Virginia  the  printing-press 
was  forbidden  to  work  at  all.  There,  even  the  first  thrust 
of  the  press-man's  lever  was  a  crime. 

The  whole  truth  with  reference  to  the  intellectual  con- 
dition of  Virginia  in  the  seventeenth  century  will  not  be- 
come manifest  to  us,  unless  we  rest  our  eyes  on  still  an- 
other trait.  Thought  was  not  free  in  Virginia ;  religion 
was  not  free  in  Virginia ;  and  this  by  the  explicit  and  re- 
iterated choice  of  the  people  of  Virginia.  The  Puritan 
zealots  of  New  England  have  for  a  hundred  years  borne 
the  just  censure  of  mankind  for  their  religious  intoler- 
ance,— their  ungentle  treatment  of  Baptists,  Quakers,  and 
witches.  These  pages  are  not  to  be  stained  by  any  apol- 
ogy for  religious  intolerance  in  New  England.  But  in 
simple  fairness  we  may  not  close  our  eyes  to  the  fact — 
seldom  mentioned  and  little  known — that  the  jovial  fox- 
hunters  of  Virginia,  the  cant-despising  cavaliers  of  the  Old 
Dominion,  were  not  a  whit  less  guilty  of  religious  intoler- 
ance. We  are  informed  by  Burk 4  of  the  burning  of  witches 


1  Thomas,  "  Hist.  Printing  in  Am."  I.  331. 
1  Chalmers,  "  Political  Annals,"  I.  345. 
1  Thomas,  "  Hist.  Printing  in  Am."  I.  332. 
«  "  Hist.  Va."  II.  Appendix,  xxxi. 


PERSECUTION  IN  VIRGINIA.  gi 

in  Virginia ;  and  as  to  the  molestation  of  men  for  their  re- 
ligious  opinions,  we  are  told  by  Campbell  that  so  early  as 
the  year  1632  an  act  of  the  assembly  of  Virginia  laid  upon 
all  who  dissented  from  the  Episcopal  Church  as  there  es- 
tablished "  the  penalty  of  the  pains  and  forfeitures  in  that 
case  appointed."1  Just  thirty  years  later,  the  same  assem- 
bly imposed  a  fine  of  two  thousand  pounds  of  tobacco  on 
"  schismatical  persons  "  that  would  not  have  their  children 
baptized;  and  on  persons  who  attended  other  religious 
meetings  than  those  of  the  established  church,  a  penalty 
of  two  hundred  pounds  of  tobacco  for  the  first  offence,  of 
five  hundred  pounds  of  tobacco  for  the  second  offence,  and 
of  banishment  for  the  third  offence.*  Marriage  was  not  tol- 
erated under  any  other  form  than  that  of  the  Prayer  Book. 
No  one,  unless  a  member  of  the  established  church,  might 
instruct  the  young,  even  in  a  private  family.  Any  ship- 
master who  should  convey  non-conformist  passengers  to 
Virginia  was  to  be  punished.  Against  Quakers  as  well 
as  Baptists  the  severest  laws  were  passed;  and  in  1664 
large  numbers  of  the  former  were  prosecuted.  Indeed, 
religious  persecution  remained  rampant  and  flourishing  in 
Virginia  long  after  it  had  died  of  its  own  shame  in  New 
England.  As  late  as  1741  penal  laws  were  enacted  in  Vir- 
ginia against  Presbyterians  and  all  other  dissenters.1  As 
late  as  1746  the  most  savage  penalties  were  denounced 
there  against  Moravians,  New  Lights,  and  Methodists.4 
In  the  presence  of  this  array  of  facts  relating  to  the  people 
of  Virginia  in  its  primal  days,  and  to  the  social  organiza- 
tion that  they  created  there,  is  not  the  phenomenon  of 
the  comparative  literary  barrenness  of  Virginia  fully  ex- 

1  "  Hut  Va."  185.  «  Ibid.  258.  •  Ibid.  442. 

*  Burk,  *  Hist.  Va."  III.  125.  For  other  authorities  upon  early  religious 
intolerance  in  Va,,  see  Bancroft,  "  Hist.  U.  S."  II.  190.  192,  201,  202  ;  Ber- 
erley.  "  Hist.  Va."  ed.  of  1855,  210.  212  ;  R.  R.  Howison,  "  Hist.  Va."  I. 
317-321;  Hildreth,  "Hist.  U.  S."  I.  126,  336;  W.  C.  Rives.  "  Life  of 
Madison."  I.  41-55  ;  Writings  of  Washington.  II.  481  ;  Wrorks  of  Jeffer- 
»on,  I.  38.  39.  174,  VIII.  398-402. 


92  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

plained  ?  How  could  literature  have  sprouted  and  thriven 
amid  such  conditions?  Had  much  literature  been  pro- 
duced there,  would  it  not  have  been  a  miracle  ?  The 
units  of  the  community  isolated ;  little  chance  for  mind  to 
kindle  mind ;  no  schools  ;  no  literary  institutions  high  or 
low ;  no  public  libraries ;  no  printing-press ;  no  intellec- 
tual freedom ;  no  religious  freedom  ;  the  forces  of  society 
tending  to  create  two  great  classes, — a  class  of  vast  land- 
owners, haughty,  hospitable,  indolent,  passionate,  given  to 
field-sports  and  politics,  and  a  class  of  impoverished  white 
plebeians  and  black  serfs ; — these  constitute  a  situation 
out  of  which  may  be  evolved  country-gentlemen,  loud- 
lunged  and  jolly  fox-hunters,  militia  heroes,  men  of  bound- 
less domestic  heartiness  and  social  grace,  astute  and  im- 
perious politicians,  fiery  orators,  and  by  and  by,  here  and 
there,  some  men  of  elegant  literary  culture,  mostly  acquired 
abroad ;  here  and  there,  perhaps,  after  a  while,  a  few  ama- 
teur literary  men ;  but  no  literary  class,  and  almost  no 
literature. 


CHAPTER  V. 

NEW  ENGLAND  TRAITS  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY. 

I. — Transition  from  Virginia  to  New  England — The  race-qualities  of  the 
first  New-Englanders — The  period  of  their  coming — Their  numbers,  and 
the  multitude  of  their  posterity. 

II. — Two  classes  of  Englishmen  in  the  seventeenth  century ;  those  resting 
upon  the  world's  attainments,  those  demanding  a  new  departure — From 
the  second  class  came  the  New-Englanders— The  purpose  of  their  coming 
an  ideal  one. 

III.— Their  intellectuality— The  large  number  of  their  learned  men— Their 
esteem  for  learning. 

IV.— Their  earnestness  of  character— Religion  the  master-thought— Their 
conceptions  of  providence  and  of  prayer— Their  religious  intensity  leading 
to  moroseness,  to  spiritual  pedantry,  to  a  jurisprudence  based  on  theology, 
and  to  persecution. 

V.— The  outward  forms  of  New  England  life— Its  prosperity — Literature  in 
early  New  England — A  literary  class  from  the  first — Circumstances  favor- 
able to  literary  action — The  limits  of  their  literary  studies — Restraints 
upon  the  liberty  of  printing — Other  disadvantages— The  quality  in  them 
which  gave  assurance  of  literary  development. 

I. 

JUST  thirteen  years  after  American  civilization  had  es- 
tablished its  first  secure  outpost  upon  the  soil  of  Virginia, 
it  succeede'd  in  establishing  a  second  outpost,  four  hun- 
dred miles  northward,  in  that  bleaker  and  more  rugged 
portion  of  the  continent  which  bears  a  name  suggestive  of 
tender  and  loyal  memories — the  name  of  New  England. 
Thus,  within  so  brief  a  period,  were  the  beginnings  made 
in  the  task  of  planting  those  two  great  colonial  communi- 
ties of  English  blood  and  speech,  Virginia  and  New  Eng- 
land, which,  with  many  things  in  common,  had  still  more 

93 


g4  HISTORY  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

things  in  contrast,  and  which  have  been  the  "  two  great 
distributing  centres  of  the  English  race"1  in  America. 

But  who,  and  of  what  sort,  were  these  people  who  in 
the  seventeenth  century  took  possession  of  New  England, 
and  who  through  their  descendants  hold  possession  of  it 
still  ?  At  the  first  glance  we  see  that  they  were  a  prolific 
race,  marrying  early,  and  if  opportunity  presented,  marry- 
ing often  ;  never  declining  to  rejoice  in  having  their  house?, 
"edified  and  beautified  with  many  children."2  The  first 
English  settlers  began  to  come  to  New  England  in  1620 ; 
during  the  subsequent  ten  years  their  immigration  was 
slow  and  slight;  but  between  1630  and  1640  they  came  in 
multitudes,  thronging  every  ship  that  pointed  its  prow 
hitherward.  With  the  latter  year,  suddenly,  all  immigra- 
tion stopped ;  for  the  opening  of  the  Long  Parliament,  by 
giving  to  the  English  Puritans  the  hope  of  curing  the  ills 
in  church  and  state  which  they  had  suffered  at  home,  took 
from  them  the  impulse  to  escape  from  those  ills  by  going 
abroad.  *  Since  the  year  1640,  the  New  England  race  has 
not  received  any  notable  addition  to  its  original  stock  ;  and 
to-day  their  Anglican  blood  is  as  genuine  and  as  unmixed 
as  that  of  any  county  in  England.  In  the  year  1640  there 
were  in  New  England  twelve  independent  groups  of  col- 
onists, fifty  towns,  a  total  population  of  about  twenty-one 
thousand  souls.8  During  the  one  hundred  and  twenty-five 
years  following  that  date,  more  persons,  it  is  supposed, 
went  back  from  the  New  to  the  Old  England  than  came 
from  the  Old  England  to  the  New.4  Yet  so  thrifty  and 
teeming  have  been  these  New-Englanders,  that  from  that 
primal  community  of  twenty-one  thousand  persons  have 
descended  the  three  and  a  half  millions  who  compose  the 
present  population  of  New  England  ;  while  of  the  entire 

1  James  Russell  Lowell,  "  Among  My  Books,"  1st  series,  239. 
*  C.  Mather,  "  Magnalia,"  I.  498. 

8  Francis  A.  Walker,  in   "  First  Century  of  the  Republic,"  215,  who  her* 
adopts  the  opinions  of  Bancroft  and  Hildreth. 
4  T.  Ilutchinson,  "  Hist.  Mass.  Bay,"  I.  Pref.  iii. 


NEW  ENGLAND  FAMILIES.  95 

population  now  spread  over  the  United  States,  probably 
every  third  person  can  read  in  the  history  of  the  first 
settlement  of  New  England  the  history  of  his  own  pro- 
genitors.1 It  hardly  needs  to  be  mentioned,  after  this, 
that  the  conditions  of  life  there  were  not  at  all  those  for 
which  Malthus  subsequently  invented  his  theory  of  in- 
hospitality  to  infants.  Population  was  sparse ;  work  was 
plentiful ;  food  was  plentiful ;  and  the  arrival  in  the  house- 
hold of  a  new  child  was  not  the  arrival  of  a  new  appetite 
among  a  brood  of  children  already  half  fed, — it  was  rather 
the  arrival  of  a  new  helper  where  help  was  scarcer  than 
food ;  it  was  in  fact  a  fresh  installment  from  heaven  of 
what  they  called,  on  Biblical  authority,  the  very  "  heritage 
of  the  Lord."  The  typical  household  of  New  England 
was  one  of  patriarchal  populousness.  Of  all  the  sayings 
of  the  Hebrew  Psalmist— except  perhaps  the  damnatory 
ones — it  is  likely  that  they  rejoiced  most  in  those  which 
expressed  the  Davidic  appreciation  of  multitudinous  chil- 
dren :  "  As  arrows  are  in  the  hand  of  a  mighty  man,  so 
are  children  of  the  youth.  Happy  is  the  man  that  hath 
his  quiver  full  of  them  :  they  shall  not  be  ashamed,  but 
they  shall  speak  with  the  enemies  in  the  gate."  The  New- 
Englanders  had  for  many  years  quite  a  number  of  enemies 
in  the  gate,  whom  they  wished  to  be  able  to  speak  with, 
in  the  unabashed  manner  intimated  by  the  devout  warrior 
of  Israel.' 


'  J.  G.  Palfrey,  "  Hist.  N.  E."  I.  Pref.  ix. 

'  Pleasant  examples  of  the  early  New  England  family  meet  one  at  almost 
every  turn  in  the  field  of  New  England  biography.  The  sturdy  patriot. 
Roger  Clap  of  Dorchester,  was  happy  in  the  possession  of  fourteen  children, 
among  whom  wew  Experience.  Waitstill.  Preserved,  Hopestill,  Wait.  Thanks, 
Desire.  Unite,  and  Supply.  Cotton  Mather  was  not  so  abundant  in  children 
as  he  was  in  books,  since  of  the  former  he  had  only  fifteen.  Benjamin  Frank- 
lin was  one  of  seventeen  children  ;  and  in  his  autobiography  he  recalls  the 
cheerful  picture  of  thirteen  of  them  seated  til  at  once  at  his  father's  table, 
"who  all  arrived  to  years  of  maturity  and  were  married."  William  Phips, 
who  attained  the  honor  of  knighthood,  and  became  a  royal  governor  of  Mas 


H1STOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITER  A  TURE. 


II. 

The  personal  traits  of  the  original  New-Englanders 
were  in  many  ways  remarkable.  To  know  these  people 
we  need  to  know  the  people  from  whom  they  came.  The 
English  race  has  been  described  as  one  having  practical 
sagacity  rather  than  ideas  ;  as  being  weighted  by  grossness 
of  fibre,  sluggishness,  animal  instincts,  earthly  preferences; 
as  caring  more  for  dull  precedents  than  for  brilliant  intui- 
tions ;  as  making  whatever  progress  it  achieves  by  feeling 
its  way  safely  step  by  step,  rather  than  by  projecting  its 
way  boldly  from  the  beginning  with  the  easy  infallibility 
of  abstract  reasoners.  There  is  some  truth  in  this  descrip- 
tion ;  but  it  is  far  from  being  the  whole  truth.  Especially 
far  is  it  from  being  the  whole  truth  if  applied  to  the 
English  people  as  they  were  in  the  first  half  of  the  seven- 
teenth century.  At  that  time,  though  they  were  appar- 
ently divided  into  many  classes,  they  were  really  divided 
into  only  two : — first,  the  disciples  of  things  as  they  are ; 
second,  the  disciples  of  things  as  they  ought  to  be.1 
Without  doubt,  in  the  first  of  these  two  classes  were  in- 
cluded vast  numbers  of  thoughtful  and  noble  natures,  who 
with  intelligent  deliberation  accepted  things  as  established 
notwithstanding  their  faults,  rather  than  encounter  the 
frightful  risk  of  having  all  things  unsettled,  and  of  making 
them  worse  in  the  very  attempt  to  make  them  better ;  but 
in  this  class,  likewise,  were  included  the  still  larger  number 


sachusetts,  was  the  son  of  a  poor  gunsmith  of  Pemaquid,  and  belonged  to  a 
flock  of  twenty-six  children,  all  of  them  of  the  same  father  and  mother,  and 
twenty-one  of  them  sons. 

1  Of  course  this  distinction  is  to  be  seen  among  any  people  who  have  begun 
to  think  ;  but  it  is  particularly  to  be  seen  among  the  English  people  at  the 
period  just  mentioned.  At  that  time  they  were  especially  given  to  thinking, 
and  their  thinking  was  turned  in  an  uncommon  degree  to  this  particular 
dispute  between  what  is  and  what  ought  to  be,— in  which  dispute,  indeed, 
they  were  then  taking  sides  openly,  with  dangerous  weapons  in  their  hands. 


1  HE  NEW  ENGLAND  STOCK. 


97 


of  those  whose  natures  were  neither  noble  nor  thoughtful, 
and  whose  conservatism  was  only  the  expression  of  their 
intellectual  torpor,  their  frivolity,  their  sensualism,  their 
narrowness,  or  their  cowardice.  As  to  the  second  class,  it 
certainly  included  many  base  persons  also,  many  crack- 
brained  and  shallow  persons,  multitudes  who  shouted  and 
wrangled  for  change,  impelled  to  it  by  all  sorts  of  con- 
temptible motives, — aimless  discontent,  curiosity,  lust, 
lawlessness,  folly,  cruelty,  ambition,  hope  of  pillage  amid 
the  wreck  of  other  people's  possessions.  Nevertheless  in 
this  class,  if  anywhere,  were  to  be  found  those  men, 
whether  many  or  few,  in  whom  at  that  time  centred  for 
the  English-speaking  race  the  possibility  of  any  further 
progress  in  human  society ;  the  men  who  not  only  dared 
to  have  ideas,  but  dared  to  put  them  together  and  to  face 
the  logical  results  of  them  ;  who  regarded  their  own  souls, 
and  truth,  more  than  they  did  gold,  or  respectability,  or 
bodily  comfort,  or  life ;  who  had  a  high  and  stout  con- 
fidence that  as  God  in  wisdom  had  made  the  world,  so 
man  by  increasing  in  wisdom  might  improve  his  own  con- 
dition in  the  world  ;  and  who  proposed  then  and  there,  if 
possible,  to  bring  all  things  in  religion  and  in  politics  to 
some  genuine  test,  in  which  nothing  foolish  should  be 
retained  because  it  was  old,  and  nothing  wise  rejected 
because  it  was  new.  At  no  other  time,  probably,  has  there 
been  in  England  a  greater  activity  of  brain  directed  toward 
researches  into  the  very  roots  of  things,  than  there  was 
during  that  time ;  and  never  in  England  has  the  class  of 
persons  just  described  been  larger  in  numbers,  wider  in 
the  range  of  its  individual  peculiarities,  more  heteroge- 
neous, more  resolute,  or  more  hopeful. 

It  was  principally  out  of  this  second  class,  this  vast, 
loosely  connected,  and  deeply  excited  class  of  Englishmen 
in  the  seventeenth  century — the  Englishmen  who  were 
not  sluggish,  were  not  living  for  physical  comfort,  were 
not  ruled  by  animal  instincts,  were  not  tied  to  precedents, 
were  not  afraid  of  ideas— that  the  twenty-one  thousand 
7 


98  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

people  came  who  between  1620  and  1640  populated  New 
England.  Primarily,  then,  these  first  New-Englanders 
were  thinkers  in  some  fashion ;  they  assumed  the  right  to 
think,  the  utility  of  thinking,  and  the  duty  of  standing  by 
the  fair  conclusions  of  their  thinking,  even  at  very  con- 
siderable cost.  Of  course  among  them  were  representa- 
tives of  all  degrees  of  intellectual  radicalism,  from  the 
wealthy,  reputable,  and  moderate  non-conformists  of  Mas- 
sachusetts Bay,  down  to  the  lowly  and  discreet  separatists 
of  Plymouth,  and  still  further  down  to  that  inspired  con- 
course of  crotchety  and  pure-hearted  enthusiasts,  the  Ana- 
baptists, Antinomians,  Quakers,  Ranters,  and  Seekers,  who 
found  their  first  earthly  paradise  in  Rhode  Island.  But 
the  one  grand  distinction  between  the  English  colonists  in 
New  England  and  nearly  all  other  English  colonists  in 
America  was  this,  that  while  the  latter  came  here  chiefly 
for  some  material  benefit,  the  former  came  chiefly  for  an 
ideal  benefit.  In  its  inception  New  England  was  not  an 
agricultural  community,  nor  a  manufacturing  community, 
nor  a  trading  community:  it  was  a  thinking  community; 
an  arena  and  mart  for  ideas  ;  its  characteristic  organ  being 
not  the  hand,  nor  the  heart,  nor  the  pocket,  but  the  brain. 

III. 

The  proportion  of  learned  men  among  them  in  those 
early  days  was  extraordinary.  It  is  probable  that  between 
the  years  1630  and  1690  there  were  in  New  England  as 
many  graduates  of  Cambridge  and  Oxford  as  could  be 
found  in  any  population  of  similar  size  in  the  mother- 
country.  At  one  time,  during  the  first  part  of  that  period, 
there  was  in  Massachusetts  and  Connecticut  a  Cambridge 
graduate  for  every  two  hundred  and  fifty  inhabitants,  be- 
sides sons  of  Oxford  not  a  few.1  Among  the  clergy  in 
particular  were  some  men  of  a  scholarship  accounted  great 

1  James  Savage,  in  Winthrop,  "  Hist.  N.  E."  I.  173,  318. 


LEAKNING  IN  NEW  ENGLAND.  99 

even  by  the  heroic  standard  of  the  seventeenth  century, 
— John  Cotton,  John  Davenport,  Richard  Mather,  Eliot, 
Norton,  Hooker,  Roger  Williams,  Stone,  Bulkley,  Nathan- 
iel Ward,  Thomas  Shepard,  Dunster,  Chauncey ;  while  the 
laity  had  among  them  several  men  of  no  inconsiderable 
learning, — the  elder  and  the  younger  Winthrop,  Thomas 
Dudley,  Simon  Bradstreet,  William  Brewster,  William 
Bradford,  Pynchon,  Daniel  Gookin,  John  Haynes.  Prob- 
ably no  other  community  of  pioneers  ever  so  honored 
study,  so  reverenced  the  symbols  and  instruments  of  learn- 
ing. Theirs  was  a  social  structure  with  its  corner-stone 
resting  on  a  book.  Universal  education  seemed  to  them 
to  be  a  universal  necessity;  and  they  promptly  provided 
for  it  in  all  its  grades.  By  the  year  1649  every  colony  in 
New  England,  except  Rhode  Island,  had  made  public 
instruction  compulsory;  requiring  that  in  each  town  of 
fifty  householders  there  should  be  a  school  for  reading 
and  writing,  and  in  each  town  of  a  hundred  householders, 
a  grammar  school  with  a  teacher  competent  "  to  fit  youths 
for  the  University ; "  and  they  did  this,  as  their  old  law 
frankly  stated  it,  in  order  that  "  learning  may  not  be  bur- 
ied in  the  grave  of  our  fathers,"J  and  especially  in  order 
to  baffle  "that  old  deluder  Sathan,"  "one  chief  project" 
of  whose  dark  ambition  it  is  "  to  keep  men  from  the 
knowledge  of  the  Scriptures"  by  persuading  them  "from 
the  use  of  tongues."1  Only  six  years  after  John  Win- 
throp's  arrival  in  Salem  harbor  the  people  of  Massachu- 
setts took  from  their  own  treasury  the  funds  with  which 
to  found  a  university ;  so  that  while  the  tree-stumps  were 
as  yet  scarcely  weather-browned  in  their  earliest  harvest- 
fields,  and  before  the  nightly  howl  of  the  wolf  had  ceased 
from  the  outskirts  of  their  villages,  they  had  made  arrange- 
ments by  which  even  in  that  wilderness  their  young  men 
could  at  once  enter  upon  the  study  of  Aristotle  and  Thu- 
cydides,  of  Horace  and  Tacitus,  and  the  Hebrew  Bible. 

'  Hildreth,  ••  Hist  U.  S."  I.  370,  371-  '  H>id. 


HISTORY  OF  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 


tud  nt  a  good  scholar,  and  a  great  Christian:     this  was 
consecrating  the  tomb-stone  of  a  young 

- 


aDDlcs  ready  to  drop  into  their  mouths.  A  b 
kamTng  wafa  treasure  almost  rising  to  the  dignity  of  real 
estate  In  ,649  a  sturdy  merchant  of  Boston  conveyed  to 
Hazard  College  a  copy  of  Stephens',  «  Thesaurus  but 
upon  the  written  condition  that  the  book  should  re- 
turned  to  him  should  he  ever  have  a  chrM  studious  irf 
Greek  and  desirous  of  that  book.  He  subsequently  had 
such  a  child,  and  actually  got  back  his  book. 


IV. 


Closely  connected  with  this  great  trait  of  intellectuality 
in  them  was  their  earnestness,  which,  indeed,  seems  t< 
have  been  not  so  much  a  separate  trait  of  character,  as  an 


'  C.  Mather,  "  Magnalia,"  I.  4"- 

«  Josiah  Quincy,  "  Hist.  Harv.  Univ."  I.  5«.  note. 


NEW  ENGLAND  EARNESTNESS, 


101 


all-pervading  moral  atmosphere,  in  which  every  function 
of  their  natures  breathed  and  wrought.  This  intensity  of 
theirs  went  with  them  into  everything — piety,  politics, 
education,  work,  play.  It  was  an  earnestness  that  could 
well  be  called  terrible.  It  lifted  them  above  human  weak- 
ness; it  made  them  victorious  and  sad.  They  were  not 
acquainted  with  indolence ;  they  forgot  fatigue ;  they  were 
stopped  by  no  difficulties ;  they  knew  that  they  could  do 
all  things  that  could  be  done.  Life  to  them  was  a  serious 
business — they  meant  to  attend  to  it ;  a  grim  battle — they 
resolved  not  to  lose  it ;  a  sacred  opportunity — they  hoped 
not  to  throw  it  away : 

"  All  is.  if  I  have  grace  to  use  it  so. 
As  ever  in  my  great  Task- Master's  eye." 

Above  all,  it  was  toward  religion,  as  the  one  supreme 
thing  in  life  and  in  the  universe,  that  all  this  intellectuality 
of  theirs  and  all  this  earnestness,  were  directed.  The 
result  was  tremendous.  Perhaps  not  since  the  time  of  the 
apostles  had  there  been  in  the  world  a  faith  so  literal,  a 
zeal  so  passionate :  not  even  in  the  time  of  the  apostles 
was  there  connected  with  these  an  intelligence  so  keen 
and  so  robust.  For  the  first  time,  it  may  be,  in  the  history 
of  the  world,  these  people  brought  together  the  subtle 
brain  of  the  metaphysician  and  the  glowing  heart  of  the 
fanatic ;  and  they  flung  both  vehemently  into  the  service 
of  religion.  Never  were  men  more  logical  or  self-consist- 
ent, in  theory  and  in  practice.  Religion,  they  said,  was 
the  chief  thing;  they  meant  it;  they  acted  upon  it.  They 
did  not  attempt  to  combine  the  sacred  and  the  secular; 
they  simply  abolished  the  secular,  and  left  only  the  sacred. 
The  state  became  the  church ;  the  king,  a  priest ;  politics, 
a  department  of  theology;  citizenship,  the  privilege  of 
those  only  who  had  received  baptism  and  the  Lord's 
Supper. 

The  literalness  and  the  logic,  which  they  applied  to 
everything,  they  applied  particularly  to  the  doctrines  of 


IQ2  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

providence  and  of  prayer.  They  believed  that  God  was 
always  near  at  hand,  and  more  than  willing  to  interpose 
in  their  smallest  affairs.  Those  Biblical  texts  about  the 
divine  observation  of  the  sparrow  that  falls  to  the  ground, 
and  of  the  number  of  the  hairs  growing  on  our  heads,  they 
took  exactly  as  the  words  stood.  A  certain  man  named 
Anthony  Thachcr,  being  shipwrecked  along  the  coast,  was 
thrown  upon  a  rock.  "  As  I  was  sliding  off  the  rock  into 
the  sea,"  he  says,  "  the  Lord  directed  my  toes  into  a  joint 
in  the  rock's  side,  as  also  the  tops  of  some  of  my  fingers, 
.  .  .  by  means  whereof,  the  wave  leaving  me,  I  remained 
so,  hanging  on  the  rock,  only  my  head  above  the  water."1 
Holding  this  faith,  they  looked  for  a  precise  providential 
meaning  in  every  small  incident  in  their  lives;  and  it  was 
the  mark  of  a  holy  and  a  wise  man  to  be  able  to  solve  the 
various  pantomimic  riddles  with  which  God  was  all  the 
time  trying  to  communicate  his  thoughts  to  them.  'Thus, 
in  the  village  of  Watertown  there  occurred  one  day  in  the 
view  of  many  witnesses,  "  a  great  combat  between  a  mouse 
and  a  snake ;  and  after  a  long  fight  the  mouse  prevailed, 
and  killed  the  snake.  The  pastor  of  Boston,  Mr.  Wilson, 
a  very  sincere,  holy  man,  hearing  of  it,  gave  this  interpre- 
tation :  that  the  snake  was  the  devil ;  the  mouse  was  a 
poor  contemptible  people  which  God  had  brought  hither, 
which  should  overcome  Satan  here,  and  dispossess  him  of 
his  kingdom."2  About  1640,  John  Winthrop,  the  younger, 
had  in  a  chamber  a  large  number  of  books ;  and,  as 
his  father  relates,  among  them  was  "one  wherein  the 
Greek  Testament,  the  Psalms,  and  the  Common  Prayer 
were  bound  together.  He  found  the  Common  Prayer 
eaten  with  mice,  every  leaf  of  it,  and  not  any  of  the  two 
other  touched,  nor  any  other  of  his  books,  though  there 
were  above  a  thousand."3  This  extraordinary  proceeding 
on  the  part  of  the  mice  in  singling  out  the  Prayer-Book 

1  Young,  "  Chron.  Mass.  Bay,"  490.        »  J.  Winthrop,  "  Hist.  N.  E."  I.  97 
3  Ibid.  II.  24. 


PROVIDENCE  AND  PR  A  YER. 


103 


for  destruction  was  indeed  an  ominous  fact.  The  vener- 
able historian  has  forborne  to  intrude  upon  us  his  own 
interpretation  of  it ;  yet  his  manner  of  telling  the  story 
intimates  that  in  his  own  mind  there  was  not  much  doubt 
that  the  ravages  of  those  little  animals  upon  the  Episcopal 
Prayer-Book  were  expressly  directed  by  the  Almighty, 
and  contained  a  strong  hint  of  the  divine  disapprobation 
of  the  very  objectionable  book  that  was  devoured  by 
them.1  With  this  belief  in  minute  providential  interven- 
tions there  was  united  a  corresponding  conception  of 
prayer.  To  them  prayer  was  something  more  than  a 
devout  soliloquy,  or  an  exercise  in  spiritual  gymnastics  val- 
uable only  for  its  reactionary  effects.  When  they  prayed 
they  thought  that  they  moved  the  hand  that  moved  the 
world.  They  spoke  of  direct  answers  to  prayer  as  one  of 
the  common  and  indubitable  facts  of  almost  daily  experi- 
ence. Thus,  one  season,  their  crops  were  imperilled  by 
caterpillars.  What  was  to  be  done?  The  people  got 
together  in  their  churches  and  asked  the  Lord  to  drive  off 
the  caterpillars:  "and  presently  after,"  says  the  old  his- 
torian, "  the  caterpillars  vanished  away." a  Once,  being  at 
sea  along  that  coast,  some  of  them  were  "  carried  by  a 
violent  storm  among  the  rocks,  where  they  could  find  no 
place  to  get  out.  So  they  went  to  prayer;  and  presently 
there  came  a  great  sea  and  heaved  their  vessel  over  into 
the  open  sea,  in  a  place  between  two  rocks."*  At  another 
time,  when  they  had  to  go  upon  a  dangerous  and  momen- 
tous military  expedition,  they  who  went  and  they  who 
stayed  at  home  "  kept  the  wheel  of  prayer  in  a  continual 


1  A  modern  and  a  very  learned  commentator  upon  this  passage  in  Winthrop 
has  ingeniously  suggested  that  the  conduct  of  the  mice  is  susceptible  of 
another  interpretation,  and  one  quite  inoffensive  to  the  Church  that  still 
cherishes  the  Prayer-Book ;  namely,  that  "  the  mice,  not  liking  psalmody, 
and  not  understanding  Greek,  took  their  food  from  another  part  of  the  vol- 
ume." James  Savage,  ibid. 

«  J.  Winthrop,  -  Hist.  N.  E."  II.  327.  •  Ibid.  4". 


IO4  HISTOR  y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

motion,"1 — not  without  some  effect,  they  believed,  upon 
the  results  of  the  expedition.  One  of  the  celebrated 
pastors  of  Cambridge  relates  this  incident  of  his  life  as  a 
student: — "When  I  could  not  take  notes  of  the  sermon, 
...  I  was  troubled  at  it,  and  prayed  the  Lord  earnestly 
that  he  would  help  me  to  note  sermons  ;  and  ...  as 
soon  as  ever  I  had  prayed  .  .  .  him  for  it,  I  presently 
the  next  Sabbath  was  able  to  take  notes,  who  the  pre- 
cedent Sabbath  could  do  nothing  at  all  that  way."2  On 
one  occasion  a  certain  Mr.  Adams  being  on  a  journey  with 
the  saintly  Boston  minister,  John  Wilson,  received  tidings 
of  the  dangerous  illness  of  his  daughter.  "  Mr.  Wilson, 
looking  up  to  heaven,  began  mightily  to  wrestle  with  God 
for  the  life  of  the  young  woman  :  .  .  .  then  turning 
himself  about  unto  Mr.  Adams,  '  Brother,'  said  he,  '  I  trust 
your  daughter  shall  live ;  I  believe  in  God  she  shall  re- 
cover of  this  sickness.'  And  so  it  marvellously  came  to 
pass,  and  she  is  now  the  fruitful  mother  of  several  desir- 
able children."3 

So  intense  a  light  could  but  cast  some  deep  shadows : 
suppressing  sweetness  and  gaiety  in  the  human  heart; 
stiffening  conscientiousness  into  scrupulosity,  rectitude 
into  asceticism  ;  making  punishment  a  species  of  retrib- 
utive vengeance ;  so  stimulating  zeal  for  their  own  creed 
that  this  zeal  should  become  intolerance  and  even  violence 
toward  those  who  held  a  creed  that  was  different.  At 
Plymouth  a  maid-servant  of  Samuel  Gorton  "  was  threat- 
ened with  banishment  from  the  colony  as  a  common  vaga- 
bond." Her  crime  was  that  she  had  smiled  in  church. 
We  read  of  a  truly  excellent  minister,  one  Thomas  Parker, 
who,  hearing  some  young  persons  laughing  very  freely  in 
a  room  below,  came  down  from  his  chamber  and  thus 
smote  them  with  his  sanctity :  "  Cousins,  I  wonder  you  can 


1  C.  Mather,  "  Magnalia,"  I.  192. 

*  Thomas  Shepard,  Autobiography, in  Young,"  Chron.  Mass.  Bay,"  502,  503. 

8  "  Magnalia,"  I.  314. 


ASCETICISM.  105 

be  so  merry,  unless  you  are  sure  of  your  salvation."1  The 
wife  of  one  minister,  being  rich  in  her  own  right,  had 
somewhat  costlier  apparel  than  ministers'  wives  were  wont 
to  have ;  and  several  unenvious  dames  in  the  parish  ex- 
pressed deep  horror  at  her  carnal-mindedness  in  wearing 
whalebone  in  the  bodice  and  sleeves  of  her  gown,  corked 
shoes,  and  other  like  things.  One  aged  and  feminine  saint, 
likewise,  was  painfully  affected  because  a  certain  "  godly 
man  "had  his  band  "something  stiffened  with  starch."* 
The  taking  of  the  creature  called  tobacco  seemed  to  many 
to  be  a  heinous  sin.  In  their  legislatures  they  passed  laws 
against  it ;  in  their  discourses  they  compared  the  smoke  of 
it  to  the  smoke  ascending  from  the  bottomless  pit.  In  com- 
mon with  their  brethren  in  England  they  suffered  great 
distress  of  mind  over  the  abomination  of  long  hair.  Grave 
divines  thundered  against  it  in  their  anniversary  sermons; 
and  potent  statesmen  solemnly  put  their  own  cropped 
heads  together  in  order  to  devise  some  scheme  for  com- 
pelling all  other  heads  to  be  as  well  shorn  as  theirs  were. 
In  1649  John  Endicott  became  by  renewed  election  gov- 
ernor of  Massachusetts  Bay ;  and  one  of  the  first  acts  of 
his  administration  for  that  year  was  "  to  institute  a  solemn 
association  against  long  hair."'  A  distinguished  divine, 
about  the  year  1660,  in  a  writing  composed  in  his  old  age, 
poured  out  an  indignant  wail  over  the  degeneracy  of  the 
times :  "  I  do  also  protest  against  all  the  evil  fashions  and 
devices  of  this  age,  both  in  apparel  and  that  general  dis- 
guisement  of  long,  ruflfianlike  hair,  a  custom  most  generally 
taken  up  at  that  time  when  the  grave  and  modest  wearing 
of  hair  was  a  part  of  the  reproach  of  Christ." 4  President 
Chauncey  raised  his  eloquent  voice  against  the  capillary 
enormity.  The  apostle  Eliot,  a  most  saintly,  wise,  and 

»  "  Magnalia,"  I.  487. 

'  These  two  incidents  occurred  among  the  brethren  in  England  and  Hol- 
land, as  related  by  Bradford.     Young,  "  Chron.  Pilgrims,"  446,  447. 
*  Morton,  "  N.  E.  Memorial,"  316,  note  by  Davis. 
4  In  Quincy,  "  Hut  Harr.  Univ."  I.  426. 


I05  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITER  A  TURE. 

sweet  spirit,  spoke  out  his  deep  grief  against  the  thing, 
believing  that  it  was  indeed  a  "  luxurious  feminine  prolix- 
ity for  men  to  wear  their  hair  long,"  and  that  it  was  pe- 
culiarly shameful  for  ministers  to  "  ruffle  their  heads  in 
excesses  of  this  kind."  Eliot  became  a  very  old  man  ;  and 
it  was  his  sorrow  to  live  long  enough  to  see  devout  deacons 
with  their  hair  undipped,  and  even  reputable  ministers  of 
the  gospel  embellished  with  the  wicked  device  of  peri- 
wigs ;  and  at  last  his  opposition  died  away  in  this  sigh  of 
despair — "the  lust  is  insuperable."1 

Their  scheme  of  legal  punishments  was  a  product  of 
theology  rather  than  of  jurisprudence.  They  measured 
out  penalties  according  to  the  moral  and  ecclesiastical 
odiousness  of  each  crime,  not  according  to  its  evil  effects 
upon  society.  Toward  the  criminal  the  judges  stood  not 
alone  as  civil  magistrates,  punishing  him  in  order  to  prevent 
others  from  becoming  like  him,  but  as  ministers  of  divine 
wrath  giving  the  wretch  in  this  world  a  foretaste  of  the 
pains  of  hell.  Thus  blasphemy  was  to  be  punished  with 
death ;  likewise  the  cursing  of  parents  by  any  one  above 
sixteen  years  of  age.  Sabbath-breaking,  neglect  of  public 
worship,  and  idleness  were  grave  offences.  "  Common 
fowlers,  tobacco-takers,  and  all  other  persons  who  could 
give  no  good  account  of  how  they  spent  their  time,"  were  to 
be  put  into  jail.2  In  their  penal  methods  there  was  great 
versatility,  and  a  logical  fitness  almost  picturesque.  We 
read  that  one  man  was  ordered  to  carry  turfs  to  the  fort 
for  being  drunk  ;  that  another,  for  being  guilty  of  "  a  light 
carriage,"  was  admonished  to  take  heed ;  that  another  was 
severely  whipped  and  kept  in  hold  for  suspicion  of  slander, 
idleness,  and  stubbornness  ;  that  John  Wedgewood  was  to 
be  set  in  the  stocks  for  being  in  the  company  of  drunkards ; 
that  Robert  Shorthose,  for  swearing  by  the  blood  of  God, 
was  to  have  his  tongue  put  into  a  cleft  stick  and  to  stand 


1  I  Mass.  Hist.  Soc.  Coll.  VHI.  27. 

*  Hutchinson,  "  Hist  Mass.  Bay,"  I.  443. 


INTOLERANCE. 


107 


so  for  the  space  of  half  an  hour ;  that  a  servant,  for  mak- 
ing a  fraudulent  bargain  with  a  child,  had  to  stand  for  two 
hours  with  his  hands  tied  up  to  a  bar,  and  a  basket  of 
stones  hanged  about  his  neck ;  that  a  certain  woman,  for 
reproaching  the  magistrates,  was  sentenced  to  be  whipped, 
and  that  "  she  stood  without  tying  and  bare  her  punish- 
ment with  a  masculine  spirit,  glorying  in  her  suffering ;  " ! 
that  this  same  heroic  dame,  eight  years  afterward,  "  had  a 
cleft  stick  put  on  her  tongue  half  an  hour,  for  reproaching 
the  elders ;  "  a  that  a  man  named  Fairfield,  for  an  atrocious 
act  of  shame,  was  sentenced  to  pay  a  fine  of  forty  pounds, 
to  be  severely  whipped  at  Boston,  to  be  severely  whipped 
again  at  Salem,  then  to  return  to  Boston  and  have  one 
nostril  slit  and  seared,  next  to  go  back  to  Salem  and  have 
the  other  nostril  slit  and  seared,  then  to  be  kept  on  Bos- 
ton Neck  so  long  as  he  lived,  to  wear  a  halter  visibly  about 
his  throat  during  the  remainder  of  his  life,  to  be  whipped 
if  he  should  appear  abroad  without  it,  and  to  die  if  he 
repeated  the  original  offence. 

One  other  personal  trait  remains  to  be  spoken  of :  these 
people  inevitably  were  persecutors.  They  lived  at  a  time 
when  not  many  human  beings  in  all  the  world  had  taken 
in  the  idea  that  an  error  in  religious  opinion  may  not  be 
a  crime ;  they  believed  with  all  their  might  that  the  reli- 
gious opinions  which  they  held  were  the  true  ones,  and 
that  having  come  out  to  the  ends  of  the  earth  to  found 
there  for  the  glory  of  God  a  pure  religious  commonwealth, 
it  would  be  impious  as  well  as  treasonable  for  them  to 
tolerate  among  them  the  presence  of  any  disbeliever. 
Among  people  of  religious  earnestness  on  both  sides  of 
the  Atlantic,  the  word  toleration  was  then  a  profligate  and 
a  scandalous  word.  "  Toleration,"  said  a  leading  member 
of  the  Westminster  Assembly,  "  is  so  prodigious  an  im- 
piety that  this  religious  parliament  cannot  but  abhor  the 


1  J.  Winthrop,  "Hut.  N.  E."  I.  340. 
*  Ibid. 


I08  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

meaning  of  it." 1  What  more  natural  than  that  Thomas 
Dudley  of  Massachusetts,  if  he  should  write  verses  at  all, 
should  write  these  verses : 

"  Let  men  of  God  in  courts  and  churches  watch 
O'er  such  as  do  a  toleration  hatch."  2 

A  saying  was  then  current  in  New  England,  that  "  Anti- 
christ was  coming  in  at  the  backdoor  by  a  general  liberty 
of  conscience."3  "It  is  Satan's  policy,"  said  Thomas 
Shepard,  "  to  plead  for  an  indefinite  and  boundless  tolera- 
tion."4 "  Every  toleration  of  false  religions  or  opinions," 
said  Nathaniel  Ward,  "hath  as  many  errors  and  sins  in  it 
as  all  the  false  religions  and  opinions  it  tolerates." 5  Finally, 
John  Norton,  with  the  devout  frankness  of  a  Spanish  in- 
quisitor, declared  that  for  the  putting  down  of  error,  "  the 
holy  tactics  of  the  civil  sword  should  be  employed."8  All 
this  was  their  sincere  belief ;  and  they  were  men  who  had 
the  habit  of  standing  by  their  sincere  beliefs  with  a  dread- 
ful fidelity.  One  example  will  be  enough.  In  1644,  the 
Baptist  Church  at  Newport,  Rhode  Island,  appointed 
three  of  its  prominent  members,  John  Clarke,  John  Cran- 
dall,  and  Obadiah  Holmes,  to  pay  a  visit  of  Christian  sym- 
pathy to  an  aged  member  of  their  church,  named  William 
Witter,  who  lived  near  Lynn,  Massachusetts,  and  who  had 
sent  to  them  a  request  for  such  a  visit.  The  delegates 
reached  Lynn  on  Saturday ;  and  on  Sunday,  for  the  com- 
fort of  their  aged  brother,  they  began  to  hold  a  religious 
service  at  his  house,  which  stood  about  two  miles  from 
the  town.  They  were  in  the  midst  of  this  service,  when, 
as  John  Clarke  writes,  "  two  constables  entered,  who  by 
their  clamorous  tongues  made  an  interruption  in  my  dis- 
course, and  more  uncivilly  disturbed  us  than  the  pursui- 

1  Narr.  Club  Pub.  III.  Pref.  xiii.  »  "  Magnalia,"  I.  134. 

3  J.  Chaplin,  "  Life  of  Henry  Dunster,"  186.         *  Ibid.  185. 
*  "  Simple  Cobbler  of  Agawam,"  8. 

*J.  Chaplin,  "Life  of  Henry  Dunster,"  184.  See  also  Longfellow's  de 
Jineation  of  Norton,  in  "  Tragedy  of  John  Endicott,"  13,  79. 


INTOLERANCE. 


109 


vants  of  the  old  English  bishops  were  wont  to  do."  The 
three  visitors  were  then  rudely  carried  off  by  the  consta- 
bles, who  exhibited  a  written  warrant  for  the  arrest ;  the 
next  day  they  were  taken  to  Boston  and  thrown  into  jail. 
Upon  their  trial  before  the  Court  of  Assistants,  Clarke 
pleaded  the  cause  of  himself  and  his  associates ;  where- 
upon the  governor,  John  Endicott,  "  stepped  up  and  told 
us  we  had  denied  infant  baptism,  and,  being  somewhat 
transported,  told  me  I  had  deserved  death,  and  said  he 
would  not  have  such  trash  brought  into  their  jurisdiction." 
The  prisoners  were  sentenced  to  pay  heavy  fines,  and  in 
default  of  payment  to  be  whipped.  Clarke's  fine  was  paid 
for  him  without  his  knowledge  ;  Crandall  was  released 
after  a  time  upon  condition  ;  and  Holmes,  after  lying  in 
jail  until  the  autumn,  was  taken  out  on  occasion  of  the 
weekly  religious  lecture  and  publicly  whipped  in  so  bar- 
barous a  manner  that  "  for  a  considerable  time  he  could 
take  no  rest,  except  by  supporting  himself  on  his  knees 
and  elbows."  l 

Such,  both  on  the  bright  and  on  the  dark  side,  were  the 
people  who  founded  New  England  in  the  seventeenth 
century,  and  who  helped,  more  than  all  other  persons,  to 
found  American  literature.  Doubtless  we  shall  be  ready 
to  say  with  Nathaniel  Hawthorne :  "  Let  us  thank  God 
for  having  given  us  such  ancestors ;  and  let  each  successive 
generation  thank  him  not  less  fervently  for  being  one 
step  further  from  them  in  the  march  of  ages."  * 

y 

The  outward  arrangements  which  they  had  constructed 
for  themselves — the  visible  framework  of  their  lives  in 


1  Narr.  Club  Pub  VI.  210-211.  note,  where  full  references  are  given  to 
the  original  authorities  for  the  above  account.  For  the  ablest  modern  ex- 
tenuation of  the  conduct  of  these  persecutors,  see  "  As  to  Roger  Williams," 
119-122,  by  Henry  Mart  YD  Dexter. 

»  -  The  Snow  Image,  and  Other  Twice-Told  Tales,"  85. 


!  !  0  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

home  and  shop  and  field  and  court  and  school  and  church 
— were  the  authentic  expression  of  their  characters,  and 
fitted  them  as  the  garment  does  the  man  who  wears  it : 
closely  related  communities ;  local  self-government ;  only 
members  of  the  church  allowed  any  voice  in  the  state; 
every  man  a  soldier ;  every  man  a  scholar ;  constant  fric- 
tion of  mind  with  mind ;  not  labor  but  idleness  deemed  a 
disgrace ;  and  all  this  upon  a  hard  soil  and  under  a  fierce 
sky.  They  were  men  who  carried  keen  brains  and  des- 
potic consciences  throbbing  in  bodies  toughened  by  toil  ; 
and  what  they  worked  out  in  the  development  of  human 
nature  and  of  human  society,  neither  America  nor  the 
world  can  yet  dispense  with.  At  once  a  grim  happiness 
began  to  sprout  up  out  of  the  sturdy  freedom  and  thrift 
which  they  made  for  themselves  here.  "  We  are  all  free- 
holders," was  the  proud  message  sent  back  to  England  by 
one  of  these  early  settlers  ;  "  the  rent-day  doth  not  trouble 
us  ;  and  all  those  good  blessings  we  have,  ...  in  their 
seasons,  for  taking."  !  Many  elements  of  civic  felicity  were 
soon  there  ;  and  with  time  whatever  elements  were  discord- 
ant with  these,  were  sure  to  be  sloughed  off.  One  of  the 
descendants  of  these  first  New-Englanders,  a  great  states- 
man of  the  eighteenth  century,  being  told  by  a  Virginian 
that  he  wished  that  his  own  commonwealth  were  like  New 
England,  offered  him  "  a  receipt  for  making  a  New  Eng- 
land in  Virginia  :  "  it  consisted  of  four  ingredients,  "  town- 
meetings,  training-days,  town-schools,  and  ministers."2 

Did  the  people  of  New  England  in  their  earliest  age 
begin  to  produce  a  literature?  Who  can  doubt  it?  With 
their  incessant  activity  of  brain,  with  so  much  both  of 
common  and  of  uncommon  culture  among  them,  with  in- 
tellectual interests  so  lofty  and  strong,  with  so  many  out- 
ward occasions  to  stir  their  deepest  passions  into  the  same 
great  currents,  it  would  be  hard  to  explain  it  had  they  in- 
deed  produced  no  literature.  Moreover,  contrary  to  what 

1  Young,  "  Chron.  Pil."  250.  »  Works  of  John  Adams,  III.  400. 


LITERAR  Y  CONDITIONS.  1 1 1 

is  commonly  asserted  of  them,  they  were  not  without  a 
literary  class.  In  as  large  a  proportion  to  the  whole  popu- 
lation as  was  then  the  case  in  the  mother-country,  there 
were  in  New  England  many  men  trained  to  the  use  of 
books,  accustomed  to  express  themselves  fluently  by  voice 
and  pen,  and  not  so  immersed  in  the  physical  tasks  of  life 
as  to  be  deprived  of  the  leisure  for  whatever  writing  they 
were  prompted  to  undertake.  It  was  a  literary  class  made 
up  of  men  of  affairs,  country-gentlemen,  teachers,  above 
all  of  clergymen  ;  men  of  letters  who  did  not  depend  upon 
letters  for  their  bread,  and  who  thus  did  their  work  under 
conditions  of  intellectual  independence.  Nor  is  it  true 
that  all  the  environments  of  their  lives  were  unfriendly  to 
literary  action ;  indeed  for  a  certain  class  of  minds  those 
environments  were  extremely  wholesome  and  stimulating. 
There  were  about  them  many  of  the  tokens  and  forces  of  a 
picturesque,  romantic,  and  impressive  life  :  the  infinite  soli- 
tudes of  the  wilderness,  its  mystery,  its  peace ;  the  near 
presence  of  nature,  vast,  potent,  unassailed  ;  the  strange 
problems  presented  to  them  by  savage  character  and  sav- 
age life ;  their  own  escape  from  great  cities,  from  crowds, 
from  mean  competitions ;  the  luxury  of  having  room 
enough ;  the  delight  of  being  free ;  the  urgent  interest  of 
all  the  Protestant  world  in  their  undertaking ;  the  hopes 
of  humanity  already  looking  thither ;  the  coming  to  them 
of  scholars,  saints,  statesmen,  philosophers.  Many  of 
these  factors  in  the  early  colonial  times  are  such  as  can- 
not be  reached  by  statistics,  and  are  apt  to  be  lost  by 
those  who  merely  grope  on  the  surface  of  history.  If  our 
antiquarians  have  generally  missed  this  view,  it  may  re- 
assure us  to  know  that  our  greatest  literary  artists  have 
not  failed  to  see  it.  "  New  England,"  as  Hawthorne 
believed,  "was  then  in  a  state  incomparably  more  pic- 
turesque than  at  present,  or  than  it  has  been  within  the 
memory  of  man."  *  That,  indeed,  was  the  beginning  of 

1  M  The  Snow  Image,"  etc.  161. 


I  1 2  HISTOR  Y~  OF  AMERICAN  LITER  A  TURE. 

"  the  old  colonial  day "  which  Longfellow  has  pictured 
to  us, 

"  When  men  lived  in  a  grander  way, 
With  ampler  hospitality." 

For  the  study  of  literature,  they  turned  with  eagerness 
to  the  ancient  classics ;  read  them  freely ;  quoted  them 
with  apt  facility.  Though  their  new  home  was  but  a  prov- 
ince, their  minds  were  not  provincial :  they  had  so  stal- 
wart and  chaste  a  faith  in  the  ideas  which  brought  them 
to  America  as  to  think  that  wherever  those  ideas  were  put 
into  practice,  there  was  the  metropolis.  In  the  public  ex- 
pression of  thought  they  limited  themselves  by  restraints 
which,  though  then  prevalent  in  all  parts  of  the  civilized 
world,  now  seem  shameful  and  intolerable:  the  printing- 
press  in  New  England  during  the  seventeenth  century 
was  in  chains.  The  first  instrument  of  the  craft  and  mys- 
tery of  printing  was  set  up  at  Cambridge  in  1639,  under 
the  auspices  of  Harvard  College ;  and  for  the  subsequent 
twenty-three  years  the  president  of  that  College  was  in 
effect  responsible  for  the  good  behavior  of  the  terrible 
machine.  His  control  of  it  did  not  prove  sufficiently 
vigilant.  The  fears  of  the  clergy  were  excited  by  the  lenity 
that  had  permitted  the  escape  into  the  world  of  certain 
books  which  tended  "to  open  the  door  of  heresy;"1  there- 
fore, in  1662  two  official  licensers  were  appointed,  without 
whose  consent  nothing  was  to  be  printed.  Even  this  did 
not  make  the  world  seem  safe ;  and  two  years  afterward 
the  law  was  made  more  stringent.  Other  licensers  were  ap- 
pointed ;  excepting  the  one  at  Cambridge  no  printing-press 
was  to  be  allowed  in  the  colony ;  and  if  from  the  printing- 
press  that  was  allowed,  anything  should  be  printed  with- 
out the  permission  of  the  licensers,  the  peccant  engine  was 
to  be  forfeited  to  the  government  and  the  printer  himself 
was  to  be  forbidden  the  exercise  of  his  profession  "  within 

J  Isaiah  Thomas,  "  Hist.  Printing  in  Am."  I.  58. 


LITER  A  R  Y  CONDITIONS.  1 1 3 

this  jurisdiction  for  the  time  to  come."  But  even  the 
new  licensers  were  not  severe  enough.  In  1667,  having 
learned  that  these  officers  had  given  their  consent  to  the 
publication  of  "  The  Imitation  of  Christ,"  a  book  written 
"  by  a  popish  minister,  wherein  is  contained  some  things 
that  are  less  safe  to  be  infused  amongst  the  people  of 
this  place,"  the  authorities  directed  that  the  book  should 
be  returned  to  the  licensers  for  "  a  more  full  revisal,"  and 
that  in  the  meantime  the  printing-press  should  stand 
still.  In  the  leading  colony  of  New  England  legal  re- 
straints upon  printing  were  not  entirely  removed  until 
about  twenty-one  years  before  the  Declaration  of  Inde- 
pendence.1 

The  chief  literary  disadvantages  of  New  England  were, 
that  her  writers  lived  far  from  the  great  repositories  of 
books,  and  far  from  the  central  currents  of  the  world's 
best  thinking;  that  the  lines  of  their  own  literary  activity 
were  few ;  and  that,  though  they  nourished  their  minds 
upon  the  Hebrew  Scriptures  and  upon  the  classics  of  the 
Roman  and  Greek  literatures,  they  stood  aloof,  with  a  sort 
of  horror,  from  the  richest  and  most  exhilarating  types  of 
classic  writing  in  their  own  tongue.  In  many  ways  their 
literary  development  was  stunted  and  stiffened  by  the 
narrowness  of  Puritanism.  Nevertheless,  what  they  lacked 
in  symmetry  of  culture  and  in  range  of  literary  movement, 
was  something  which  the  very  integrity  of  their  natures 
was  sure  to  compel  them,  either  in  themselves  or  in  their 
posterity,  to  acquire.  For  the  people  of  New  England  it 
must  be  said  that  in  stock,  spiritual  and  physical,  they 
were  well  started ;  and  that  of  such  a  race,  under  such  op- 
portunities, almost  anything  great  and  bright  may  be  pre- 
dicted. Within  their  souls  at  that  time  the  aesthetic  sense 
was  crushed  down  and  almost  trampled  out  by  the  fell 
tyranny  of  their  creed.  But  the  aesthetic  sense  was  still 
within  them ;  and  in  pure  and  wholesome  natures  such  as 

1  Thomas,  "  Hist.  Printing  in  Am."  I.  16,  58,  59. 
8 


114 


HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITER  A  TURE. 


theirs,  its  emergence  was  only  a  matter  of  normal  growth. 
They  who  have  their  eyes  fixed  in  adoration  upon  the 
beauty  of  holiness,  are  not  far  from  the  sight  of  all  beauty. 
It  is  not  permitted  to  us  to  doubt  that  in  music,  in  paint- 
ing, architecture,  sculpture,  poetry,  prose,  the  highest  art 
wilt  be  reached,  in  some  epoch  of  its  growth,  by  the  robust 
and  versatile  race  sprung  from  those  practical  idealists  of 
the  seventeenth  century — those  impassioned  seekers  after 
the  invisible  truth  and  beauty  and  goodness.  Even  in 
their  times,  as  we  shall  presently  see,  some  sparkles  and 
prophecies  of  the  destined  splendor  could  not  help  break 
ing  forth. 


CHAPTER  VI. 

NEW  ENGLAND:    HISTORICAL  WRITERS. 

I— Early  development  of  the  historic  consciousness  in  New  England. 

II.— William  Bradford— His  career  in  England,  Holland,  and  America— His 
History  of  Plymouth— Singular  fate  of  the  manuscript— His  fitness  for 
historical  writing— Outline  of  the  work— Condition  and  feelings  of  the 
Pilgrims  when  first  ashore  at  Plymouth— Portrait  of  a  clerical  mountebank 
— The  skins  needed  by  the  founders  of  colonies— Unfamiliar  personal 
aspects  of  the  Pilgrims — Their  predominant  nobility— Summary  of  this 
historian's  traits, 

III.— Nathaniel  Morton— His  life— His  "  Memorial,"  and  how  he  made  it 
— Lack  of  originality  in  it  and  in  him. 

IV.— The  sailing  of  the  Winthrop  fleet— John  Winthrop  himself— His 
"Model  of  Christian  Charity"— His  "History  of  New  England  "—An 
historical  diary — Its  minute  fidelity  and  graphic  power — Examples — His 
famous  speech. 

V.— Edward  Johnson— His  "  Wonder- Working  Providence  "—How  he  came 
to  write  it— Reflects  the  greatness  and  pettiness  of  the  New  England 
Puritans — Examples — Its  literary  peculiarities. 

VI. — The  literature  of  the  Pequot  War— John  Mason  its  hero  and  historian — 
His  book — His  story  of  the  Mystic  fight. 

VII.— The  high  worth  of  Daniel  Gookin— An  American  sage,  patriot,  and 
philanthropist — The  trials  and  triumphs  of  his  life — His  two  historical 
works  relating  to  the  Indians. 


WE  now  enter  upon  the  study  of  the  earliest  contribu- 
tions made  to  American  literature  by  New  England.  We 
begin  with  its  historical  writings — historical  writings  relat- 
ing to  New  England,  and  produced  in  New  England,  in 
its  very  first  century,  nay,  in  its  very  first  generation.  Of 
course  history,  as  signifying  the  act  by  which  the  present 
reviews  the  past  and  utters  a  passionless,  wise,  and  final 
verdict  upon  it,  New  England  had  not  and  could  not  have, 

"5 


I X6  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

either  in  its  first  generation  or  in  its  first  century.  But 
this  it  had,  an  historical  consciousness;  a  belief,  born  with 
itself,  in  the  large  human  significance  of  its  great  task  of 
founding  a  new  order  of  things  in  America ;  an  assurance 
that  what  it  was  then  doing  the  future  would  desire  to 
know  about,  and  therefore  that  for  the  benefit  of  the 
future  the  present  should  keep  a  record  of  itself.  The 
history  that  the  earliest  men  of  New  England  wrote  was 
what  we  may  call  contemporaneous  history ;  it  was  his- 
torical diarizing ;  it  was  the  registration  of  events  as  they 
went  by,  or  as  they  yet  lived  in  the  memories  of  the  living. 
Here,  indeed,  are  extraordinary  facts, — the  early  develop- 
ment of  the  historical  consciousness  in  New  England,  the 
large  number  of  historical  writers  that  it  produced  in  its 
primal  age,  the  amount  and  the  quality  of  the  work  that 
these  writers  did.  We  find  in  our  first  literary  period  no 
less  than  six  writers  who  deserve  mention  as  historians ; 
and  it  is  through  a  study  of  what  they  wrote  that  we  can 
best  make  our  way  into  the  very  heart  of  the  intellectual 
life  of  the  period,  and  qualify  ourselves  to  judge  of  all  its 
literary  memorials. 

II. 

William  Bradford,  of  the  Mayflower  and  Plymouth 
Rock,  deserves  the  pre-eminence  of  being  called  the  father 
of  American  history.  We  pay  to  him  also  that  homage 
which  we  render  to  those  authors  who  even  by  their  writ- 
ings give  to  us  the  impression  that,  admirable  as  they  may 
be  in  authorship,  behind  their  authorship  is  something  still 
more  admirable — their  own  manliness.  He  was  born  in 
Austerfield,  Yorkshire,  in  1590  ;  at  the  age  of  seventeen  he 
became  a  zealous  member  of  the  little  company  of  separa- 
tists  who,  under  the  ministry  of  the  saintly  John  Robinson, 
fled  from  England  into  Holland  ;  at  the  age  of  thirty 
he  appeared  as  a  prominent  man  among  that  portion  of 
John  Robinson's  flock  who  landed  in  New  England  in  1620, 
and  from  1621  until  his  death  in  1657  he  was  annually 


WILLIAM  BRADFORD. 


117 


chosen  governor  of  the  colony,  excepting  on  five  occasions 
when  "  by  importunity  he  got  off."  After  he  had  been  in 
America  ten  years  and  had  seen  proof  of  the  permanent 
success  of  the  heroic  movement  in  which  he  was  a  leader, 
his  mind  seems  to  have  been  possessed  by  the  historic 
significance  of  that  movement ;  and  thenceforward  for 
twenty  years  he  gave  his  leisure  to  the  composition  of  a 
work  in  which  the  story  of  the  settlement  of  New  England 
should  be  told  in  a  calm,  just,  and  authentic  manner.  The 
result  was  his  "  Hjstory_of ^Plymouth  Plantation," — a  book 
which  has  had  an  extraordinary  fate.  It  was  left  by  its 
author  in  manuscript.  After  his  death,  it  came  into  the 
hands  of  his  nephew,  Nathaniel  Morton,  by  whom  it  was 
profusely  used  in  the  composition  of  his  famous  "  New 
England's  Memorial,"  published  in  1669.  Afterward,  the 
manuscript  belonged  to  Thomas  Prince,  who  drew  from  it 
what  he  desired  when  writing  his  "Chronological  History 
of  New  England."  By  Prince  the  old  book  was  left  at  his 
death  in  his  library  in  the  tower  of  old  South  Church,  Bos- 
ton, where  it  was  used  by  Thomas  Hutchinson  when  en- 
gaged on  his  "  History  of  Massachusetts  Bay."  During 
the  occupation  of  Boston  by  the  British  troops  in  1775  and 
1776,  Prince's  library  was  plundered,  and  many  precious 
historical  documents  were  destroyed.  Bradford's  manu- 
script was  known  to  have  been  in  that  library  not  long 
before;  and  as  afterward  it  did  not  appear  among  the 
remains  of  the  library,  it  was  given  up  for  lost,  and  was 
mourned  over  by  American  scholars  for  nearly  a  hundred 
years.  In  1855,  however,  the  long-lost  treasure  was  dis- 
covered in  England,  in  the  Fulham  library,  the  ancient  and 
rich  collection  belonging  to  the  Bishop  of  London.  It  was 
thereupon  at  once  copied,  and  published  in  this  country;1 
and  by  American  historical  students  it  was  welcomed  back 
into  life  with  a  sort  of  jubilant  all-hail. 

There  is  no  other  document  upon  New  England  history 

'  In  4  MAIS.  Hist  Soc.  Coll.  III. 


I  l  g  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITER  A  TURE. 

that  can  take  precedence  of  this  either  in  time  or  in 
authority.  Governor  Bradford  wrote  of  events  that  had 
passed  under  his  own  eye,  and  that  had  been  shaped  by 
his  own  hand ;  and  he  had  every  qualification  of  a  trust- 
worthy narrator.  His  mind  was  placid,  grave,  well-poised  ; 
he  was  a  student  of  many  books  and  of  many  languages  ;l 
and  being  thus  developed  both  by  letters  and  by  experi- 
ence, he  was  able  to  tell  well  the  truth  of  history  as  it  had 
unfolded  itself  during  his  own  strenuous  and  benignant 
career.  His  history  is  an  orderly,  lucid,  and  most  instruc- 
tive work ;  it  contains  many  tokens  of  its  author's  appreci- 
ation of  the  nature  and  requirements  of  historical  writing; 
and  though  so  recently  published  in  a  perfect  form,  it 
must  henceforward  take  its  true  place  at  the  head  of 
American  historical  literature,  and  win  for  its  author  the 
patristic  dignity  that  we  have  ascribed  to  him. 

The  philosophical  thoroughness  of  his  plan  is  indicated 
at  the  very  beginning  of  his  book.  In  relating  the  history 
of  Plymouth  plantation  he  undertakes  to  go  back  to  "the 
very  root  and  rise  of  the  same,"  and  to  show  its  "  occasion 
and  inducements ;  "  and  he  avows  his  purpose  to  write 
"  in  a  plain  style,  with  singular  regard  unto  the  simple  truth 
in  all  things."  This  plan  of  course  conducts  him  into  an 
account  of  the  origin  of  religious  dissent  in  England,  and 
of  the  lamentable  blunders  of  English  churchmen  and 
statesmen  in  their  attempts  to  beat  back  that  dissent  into 
submission  and  to  throttle  its  free  voice.  There  is  a  charm 
in  the  simple  English  and  in  the  quiet  pathos  of  his  words 
as  he  depicts  the  sufferings  of  these  persecuted  ones,  par- 
ticularly of  the  little  congregation  at  Scrooby,  with  which 
the  author  himself  was  identified  :  "  But  after  these  things 

'Besides  his  own  language  he  knew  Dutch,  French,  Latin,  and  Greek; 
and  in  his  old  age  he  was  a  diligent  student  of  Hebrew.  "  Though  I  am 
grown  aged,  yet  I  have  had  a  longing  to  see  with  mine  own  eyes  something 
of  that  most  ancient  language  and  holy  tongue,  in  which  the  law  and  oracles 
of  God  were  writ,  and  in  which  God  and  angels  spake  to  the  holy  patriarch* 
of  old  time."  Bradford's  "  Dialogue,"  ed.  by  Charles  Deane,  Pref.  viii. 


WILLIAM  BRADFORD.  ng 

they  could  not  longer  continue  in  any  peaceable  condition; 
but  were  hunted  and  persecuted  on  every  side,  so  as  their 
former  afflictions  were  but  as  flea-bitings  in  comparison  of 
these  which  now  came  upon  them.  For  some  were  taken 
and  clapped  up  in  prison  ;  others  had  their  houses  beset 
and  watched  night  and  day,  and  hardly  escaped  their 
hands:  and  the  most  were  fain  to  fly  and  leave  their 
houses  and  habitations  and  the  means  of  their  livelihood. 
Yet  these  and  many  other  sharper  things  which  afterward 
befel  them,  were  no  other  than  they  looked  for,  and  there- 
fore were  the  better  prepared  to  bear  them  by  the  assist- 
ance of  God's  grace  and  spirit.  Yet  seeing  themselves 
thus  molested,  and  that  there  was  no  hope  of  their  con- 
tinuance there,  by  a  joint  consent  they  resolved  to  go 
into  the  Low-Countries,  where  they  heard  was  freedom 
of  religion  for  all  men."1  He  then  proceeds  to  tell  "of 
their  departure  into  Holland  and  their  troubles  there- 
about, with  some  of  the  many  difficulties  they  found  and 
met  withal;"1  "of  their  manner  of  living  and  entertain- 
ment there;"'  of  "the  reasons  and  causes  of  their  re- 
moval"4 across  "the  vast  and  furious  ocean."  "The 
place  they  had  thoughts  on  was  some  of  those  vast  and 
unpeopled  countries  of  America,  which  are  fruitful  and  fit 
for  habitation,  being  devoid  of  all  civil  inhabitants,  where 
there  are  only  salvage  and  brutish  men  which  range  up 
and  down,  little  otherwise  than  the  wild  beasts  of  the 
same." B  There  is  something  very  impressive  in  the  quiet, 
sage  words  in  which  he  pictures  the  conflicts  of  opinion 
among  the  Pilgrims  over  this  question  of  their  removal  to 
America,  their  clear,  straight  view  of  the  perils  and  pains 
which  it  would  involve,  and  finally  the  considerations 
that  moved  them,  in  spite  of  all  the  tremendous  difficul- 
ties they  foresaw,  to  make  their  immortal  attempt.  No 
modern  description  of  these  modest  and  unconquerable 


'  "  H»t.  Plym.  Plantation,"  10.  »  Ibid.  11. 

«  Ibid.  16.  4  Ibid.  22.  »  Ibid.  24-25. 


!  20  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITER  A  TURE. 

heroes  can  equal  the  impression  made  upon  us  by  the 
reserve  and  the  moral  sublimity  of  the  historian's  words : 
"  It  was  answered  that  all  great  and  honorable  actions  are 
accompanied  with  great  difficulties,  and  must  be  both  en- 
terprised  and  overcome  with  answerable  courages.  It  was 
granted  the  dangers  were  great,  but  not  desperate  ;  the 
difficulties  were  many,  but  not  invincible.  For  though 
there  were  many  of  them  likely,  yet  they  were  not  certain; 
it  might  be  sundry  of  the  things  feared  might  never  befall; 
others  by  provident  care  and  the  use  of  good  means  might 
in  a  great  measure  be  prevented  ;  and  all  of  them,  through 
the  help  of  God,  by  fortitude  and  patience,  might  either 
be  borne  or  overcome.  True  it  was  that  such  attempts 
were  not  to  be  made  and  undertaken  without  good  ground 
and  reason  ;  not  rashly  or  lightly  as  many  have  done  for 
curiosity  or  hope  of  gain,  and  so  forth.  But  their  condi- 
tion was  not  ordinary ;  their  ends  were  good  and  honor- 
able ;  their  calling  lawful  and  urgent ;  and  therefore  they 
might  expect  the  blessing  of  God  in  their  proceeding. 
Yea,  though  they  should  lose  their  lives  in  this  action,  yet 
might  they  have  comfort  in  the  same,  and  their  endeavors 
would  be  honorable."  1  A  minute  account  is  then  given 
of  their  negotiations  in  England  and  in  Holland  for  per- 
mission to  settle  in  America ;  of  their  difficulties  about 
money,  ships,  food,  destination  ;  and  finally  of  their  de- 
parture from  Holland,  their  delays,  toils,  and  risks,  in  get- 
ting  free  of  the  English  coast,  their  long  voyage  over  the 
sea,  their  groping  and  dubious  approach  to  Plymouth  har- 
bor, and  their  final  debarkation  there.  The  language  in 
which  the  historian  describes  their  condition  and  their 
emotion  on  reaching  shore  is  a  noble  specimen  of  simple, 
picturesque,  and  pathetic  eloquence,  and  deserves  an  hon- 
orable place  in  the  record  of  contemporaneous  English 
style :  "  Being  thus  arrived  in  a  good  harbor  and  brought 
safe  to  land,  they  fell  upon  their  knees  and  blessed  the 

1  "  Hist.  Plym.  Plantation,"  26. 


WILLIAM  BRADFORD. 


121 


God  of  heaven,  who  had  brought  them  over  the  vast  and 
furious  ocean,  and  delivered  them  from  all  the  perils  and 
miseries  thereof,  again  to  set  their  feet  on  the  firm  and 
stable  earth,  their  proper  element.  And  no  marvel  if  they 
were  thus  joyful,  seeing  wise  Seneca  was  so  affected  with 
sailing  a  few  miles  on  the  coast  of  his  own  Italy,  as  he 
affirmed,  that  he  had  rather  remain  twenty  years  on  his 
way  by  land,  than  pass  by  sea  to  any  place  in  a  short 
time ;  so  tedious  and  dreadful  was  the  same  unto  him. 
But  here  I  cannot  but  stay  and  make  a  pause,  and  stand 
half  amazed  at  this  poor  people's  present  condition ;  and 
so  I  think  will  the  reader  too  when  he  well  considers  the 
same.  Being  thus  passed  the  vast  ocean  and  a  sea  of 
troubles  before,  in  their  preparation,  .  .  .  they  had 
now  no  friends  to  welcome  them,  nor  inns  to  entertain  or 
refresh  their  weather-beaten  bodies,  no  houses  or  much 
less  towns  to  repair  to,  to  seek  for  succor.  It  is  recorded 
in  Scripture  as  a  mercy  to  the  apostle  and  his  shipwrecked 
company,  that  the  barbarians  shewed  them  no  small  kind- 
ness in  refreshing  them  ;  but  these  savage  barbarians  when 
they  met  with  them  .  .  .  were  readier  to  fill  their 
sides  full  of  arrows  than  otherwise.  And  for  the  season, 
it  was  winter ;  and  they  that  know  the  winters  of  that 
country  know  them  to  be  sharp  and  violent,  and  subject 
to  cruel  and  fierce  storms,  dangerous  to  travel  to  known 
places,  much  more  to  search  an  unknown  coast.  Be- 
sides, what  could  they  see  but  a  hideous  and  desolate 
wilderness,  full  of  wild  beasts  and  wild  men?  And  what 
multitudes  there  might  be  of  them,  they  knew  not.  Nei- 
ther could  they,  as  it  were,  go  up  to  the  top  of  Pisgah,  to 
view  from  this  wilderness  a  more  goodly  country  to  feed 
their  hopes  ;  for  which  way  soever  they  turned  their  eyes 
(save  upward  to  the  heavens)  they  could  have  little  solace 
or  content  in  respect  of  any  outward  objects.  For  summer 
being  done,  all  things  stand  upon  them  with  a  weather- 
beaten  face  ;  and  the  whole  country,  full  of  woods  and 
thickets,  represented  a  wild  and  savage  hue.  If  they 


1 22  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

looked  behind  them,  there  was  the  mighty  ocean  which 
they  had  passed,  and  was  now  as  a  main  bar  and  gulf 
to  separate  them  from  all  the  civil  parts  of  the  world. 
.  .  .  What  could  now  sustain  them  but  the  spirit  of 
God  and  his  grace  ?  May  not,  and  ought  not,  the  chil- 
dren of  these  fathers  rightly  say:  '  Our  fathers  were  Eng- 
lishmen which  came  over  this  great  ocean  and  were  ready 
to  perish  in  this  wilderness ;  but  they  cried  unto  the  Lord 
and  he  heard  their  voice  and  looked  on  their  adversity. 
.  .  .  When  they  wandered  in  the  desert  wilderness  out 
of  the  way,  and  found  no  city  to  dwell  in,  both  hungry 
and  thirsty,  their  soul  was  overwhelmed  in  them.  Let 
them  confess  before  the  Lord  his  loving-kindness,  and  his 
wonderful  works  before  the  sons  of  men.'  " l 

As  the  history  proceeds  year  by  year,  few  things  are 
omitted  that  a  noble  curiosity  could  desire  to  look  into, 
the  bright  and  the  sombre  side  of  that  primal  life, — its  in- 
adequate shelter,  its  sickness,  its  weariness,  its  long  pres- 
sure upon  the  verge  of  famine  and  assassination,  its  rough- 
ness, its  grim  toils,  its  ignoble  wranglings  and  meannesses, 
its  incongruous  outbreaks  of  crime,  its  steady  persistent 
ascent  into  prosperity  through  sagacious  enterprise,  hard 
work,  and  indomitable  faith,  its  piety,  its  military  exploits, 
its  philanthropy,  its  acute  diplomacy,  its  far-eyed  states- 
manship. As  the  book  is  composed  in  the  form  of  annual 
records  of  experience,  it  has  the  privilege  of  stopping 
where  it  will  without  violating  its  own  unity.  The  histo- 
rian's hand  kept  moving  upon  this  task  for  twenty  years ; 
and  when  at  last  old  age  and  public  cares  rested  too  heavy 
upon  it,  the  work,  brought  down  to  1646,  was  finished  so 
far  as  it  went.  Break  off  when  it  would,  that  work  could 
not  be  a  fragment. 

The  prevailing  trait  of  its  pages  is  of  course  grave  ;  but 
at  times  this  sedateness  is  relieved  by  a  quaint  and  pithy 
emphasis  of  phrase  that  amounts  almost  to  humor.  But 

1  "  Hist.  Plym.  Plantation,"  78-80. 


WILLIAM  BRADFORD.  ^3 

a  writer  like  Bradford  is  more  likely  to  condescend  to  a 
solemn  sort  of  sarcasm  than  to  humor ;  as,  for  instance,  in 
his  dealing  with  John  Lyford,  the  mischievous  clerical  im- 
postor who  in  1624  found  his  way  to  Plymouth,  and  vexed 
the  souls  of  the  Pilgrims  by  the  antics  of  his  sly,  sensual, 
and  malignant  life.  Some  lines  in  Bradford's  sketch  of 
this  fawning  swindler  remind  one  of  the  more  elaborate 
work  of  a  mighty  painter  of  human  character  in  our 
own  time,  having  particularly  an  amusing  resemblance  to 
that  great  artist's  portrait  of  Uriah  Heep.  The  historian 
ushers  Lyford  upon  the  stage  under  the  ironical  title  of 
an  "  eminent  person,"  and  adds  that  when  he  "  first  came 
ashore,  he  saluted  them  with  that  reverence  and  humility 
as  is  seldom  to  be  seen,  and  indeed  made  them  ashamed, 
he  so  bowed  and  cringed  unto  them,  and  would  have  kissed 
their  hands  if  they  would  have  suffered  him  ;  yea,  he  wept 
and  shed  many  tears,  blessing  God  that  had  brought  him 
to  see  their  faces;  and  admiring  the  things  they  had  done 
in  their  wants,  and  so  forth,  as  if  he  had  been  made  all 
of  love,  and  the  humblest  person  in  the  world."1  In  the 
early  and  doubtful  days  of  the  Plymouth  colony,  the  true 
men  were  troubled  by  the  querulous  and  paltry  complaints 
which  by  some  of  the  weaker  brethren  were  sent  back  or 
carried  back  to  England,  and  which  had  the  effect  of  dis- 
couraging the  flow  of  emigration  thither.  Many  of  these 
complaints  seemed  to  a  man  like  Bradford  to  be  too  des- 
picable for  serious  notice,  as  this,  "  that  the  people  are 
much  annoyed  with  mosquitoes."  His  contemptuous  an- 
swer was:  "They  are  too  delicate,  and  unfit  to  begin 
new  plantations  and  colonies,  that  cannot  endure  the  bit- 
ing of  a  mosquito.  We  would  wish  such  to  keep  at  home 
till  at  least  they  be  mosquito-proof."  * 

This  old  document  brings  into  view  some  aspects  of 
character  now  not  commonly  presented  as  belonging  to 
those  august  personages  whom  we  reverently  name  the 

1  "  Hist.  Pljrm.  Plantation,"  171.  *  Ibid.  163. 


124 


HISTORY  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 


Pilgrim  Fathers.  Through  the  thick  haze  of  oratorical 
compliment  that  has  so  long  enveloped  their  persons,  we 
perhaps  fail  to  see  the  literal  and  prosaic  truth  concerning 
them.  They  were  not  all  of  the  saintly  and  heroic  type, 
bearing  every  burden  with  speechless  and  devout  endur- 
ance. Even  while  their  feet  had  but  just  touched  the 
sacred  granite  of  Plymouth  Rock,  "  discontents  and  mur- 
murings  "  arose  among  some,  and  "  mutinous  speeches  and 
carriages "  among  others. l  Even  some  of  the  best  of 
them,  perhaps,  would  have  seemed  to  us  rather  pragmati- 
cal and  disputatious  persons,  with  all  the  edges  and  cor- 
ners of  their  characters  left  sharp,  with  all  their  opinions 
very  definitely  formed,  and  with  their  habits  of  frank  ut- 
terance quite  thoroughly  matured.  Certainly,  in  these 
pages,  they  do  not  seem  to  have  been  a  company  of  gentle, 
dreamy,  and  euphemistical  saints,  with  a  particular  apti- 
tude for  martyrdom,  and  an  inordinate  development  of 
affability.  The  world,  it  appears,  is  indebted  for  much  of 
its  progress  to  uncomfortable  and  even  grumpy  people ; 
and  the  Pilgrim  Fathers  had  so  implacable. a  desire  to  have 
things  quite  right  according  to  their  own  austere  standard, 
that  even  on  the  brink  of  any  momentous  enterprise,  they 
would  stop  and  argue  the  case,  if  a  suspicion  occurred 
to  them  that  things  were  not  quite  right.  This  exacting 
and  tenacious  propensity  of  theirs  was  not  a  little  criti- 
cised by  some  who  had  business  connections  with  them. 
Thomas  Weston  of  London,  in  his  disgust  at  the  first  re- 
turn of  the  Mayflower  from  Plymouth  without  any  lad- 
ing, told  them  by  letter  that  "  a  quarter  of  the  time  "  they 
"  spent  in  discoursing,  arguing,  and  consulting "  would 
have  enabled  them  to  make  a  better  showing  of  the  com- 
mercial success  of  their  expedition.  The  impetuous  and 
noble-hearted  Robert  Cushman,  with  his  practical  eye,  and 
his  keen  zest  for  unhindered  action,  complained  of  the 
interminable  disputations  of  the  Pilgrims  when  hovering 

1  "  Hist.  Plym.  Plantation,"  90-91. 


WILLIAM  BRADFORD.  ^5 

upon  the  English  coast  preparatory  to  their  famous  ocean 
voyage :  "  We  that  should  be  partners  of  humility  and  peace 
shall  be  examples  of  jangling  and  insulting ; "  "  there  is 
fallen  already  amongst  us  a  flat  schism  ;  and  we  are  readier 
to  go  to  dispute,  than  to  set  forward  a  voyage."  l 

Nevertheless,  upon  almost  every  page  of  this  history 
there  is  some  quiet  trace  of  the  lofty  motives  which  con- 
ducted them  to  their  great  enterprise,  and  of  the  simple 
heroism  of  their  thoughts  in  pursuing  it.  They  had  under- 
taken the  voyage,  "  for  the  glory  of  God,  and  advancement 
of  the  Christian  faith,"  and  for  the  honor  of  their  "  king 
and  country."  *  In  computing  the  prodigious  labors  and 
sufferings  of  it,  they  deliberately  judged  themselves  to  be 
suitable  to  encounter  them  ;  for  "  it  is  not  with  us  as  with 
other  men,  whom  small  things  can  discourage,  or  small  dis- 
contentments cause  to  wish  themselves  at  home  again."  * 
"  We  are  well  weaned  from  the  delicate  milk  of  our  mother- 
country,  and  inured  to  the  difficulties  of  a  strange  and 
hard  land,  which  yet  in  a  great  part  we  have  by  patience 
overcome."  4  With  all  their  hard  grip  of  the  things  of  this 
world,  their  carefulness  in  bargains,  their  mechanic  indus- 
try, their  pecuniary  thrift,  they  had  a  just  estimate  of  the 
limited  value  of  earthly  possessions,  and  a  sincere  habit  of 
unworldly-mindedness.  Being  baffled  in  one  of  their  pro- 
jects for  getting  to  America,  after  having  much  trusted  to 
this  plan,  they  were  greatly  disappointed ;  and  Bradford 
calls  it  "a  right  emblem,  it  may  be,  of  the  uncertain 
things  of  this  world ;  that  when  men  have  toiled  them- 
selves for  them,  they  vanish  into  smoke."8  Upon  their 
final  departure  from  Leyden,  he  says:  "So  they  left  that 
goodly  and  pleasant  city  which  had  been  their  resting 
place  near  twelve  years ;  but  they  knew  they  were  pil- 
grims, and  looked  not  much  on  those  things,  but  lift  up 
their  eyes  to  the  heavens,  their  dearest  country,  and 
quieted  their  spirits." ' 

1  "  Hist.  Plym.  Plantation,"  57.  *  Ibid.  89-90.          *  Ibid.  33. 

«  IbicL  32.  •  Ibid.  41.  •  Ibid.  59. 


1 26  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITER  A  T  URE. 

Thus  are  made  plain  to  us  the  commanding  qualities 
of  the  mind  and  style  of  our  first  American  historian, — 
justice,  breadth,  vigor,  dignity,  directness,  and  an  un- 
troubled command  of  strong  and  manly  speech.  Evi- 
dently he  wrote  without  artistic  consciousness  or  ambi- 
tion. The  daily  food  of  his  spirit  was  noble.  He  uttered 
himself,  without  effort,  like  a  free  man,  a  sage,  and  a 
Christian. 

III. 

Nathaniel  Morton,  whose  name  we  place  next  to  that 
of  William  Bradford  merely  on  account  of  the  close  per- 
sonal connection  between  the  two  men,  was  born  in  Eng- 
land in  1613.  With  his  father's  family  he  came  to  Plym- 
outh in  1623.  In  1624,  his  father  died,  and  thencefor- 
ward Nathaniel  was  the  object  of  paternal  kindness  from 
his  illustrious  uncle,  Governor  Bradford.  In  1645,  being 
thirty-two  years  old,  he  was  elected  secretary  of  Plym- 
outh Colony,  and  continued  to  hold  that  office  until  his 
death  forty  years  afterward. 

The  occupation  of  his  life,  his  presence  in  the  colony 
almost  from  the  beginning,  and  his  familiar  acquaintance 
with  its  leading  men,  all  directed  his  thoughts  toward  the 
composition  of  its  history.  The  result  was  the  publica- 
tion at  Cambridge,  Massachusetts,  in  1669,  of  "  New  Eng- 
land's Memorial,"  which  the  author  himself  describes  as 
"  a  brief  relation  of  the  most  memorable  and  remarkable 
passages  of  the  providence  of  God  manifested  to  the 
planters  of  New  England  in  America,  with  special  refer- 
ence to  the  first  colony  thereof  called  New  Plymouth."1 
He  takes  pains  to  mention  that  his  principal  authorities 
are  the  manuscript  history  of  his  uncle,  and  "  certain 
diurnals  of  the  honored  Mr.  Edward  Winslow."  The  use 
which  he  made  of  these  authorities  was  to  transcribe  large 
portions  of  them  with  almost  literal  exactness  to  his  own 

1  Title-page. 


NATHANIEL  MORTON.  I2f 

pages.1  Bradford's  manuscript  ends  with  1646;  Winslow's 
could  not  have  continued  later  than  1649 ;  and  from  about 
this  time,  Morton's  history,  deprived  of  the  copious  cur- 
rents of  their  assistance,  dwindles  into  a  mere  rill  of  obit- 
uary notices  relating  principally  to  godly  ministers  there- 
after from  time  to  time  defunct. 

Morton's  modesty  in  alluding  to  his  own  literary  merits 
would  perhaps  disarm  us  of  severity  in  criticising  him, 
even  if  we  were  not  already  intimidated  by  the  quaint  and 
tremendous  dehortation  with  which  he  has  undertaken  to 
shield  his  book  :  "  Let  not  the  harshness  of  my  style 
prejudice  thy  taste  or  appetite  to  the  dish  I  present  the* 
with.  Accept  it  as  freely  as  I  give  it.  Carp  not  at  what 
thou  dost  not  approve,  but  use  it  as  a  remembrance  of 
the  Lord's  goodness,  to  engage  to  true  thankfulness  and 
obedience  ;  so  it  may  be  a  help  to  thee  in  thy  journey 
through  the  wilderness  of  this  world,  to  that  eternal  rest 
which  is  only  to  be  found  in  the  heavenly  Canaan."1 

We  need  not  expect  to  find  in  an  author  who  is  a  mere 
historical  copyist,  any  individual  force  or  originality.  Mor- 
ton was  shaped  plastically  by  the  hand  of  his  sect  and  of  his 
locality  ;  and  wherever  he  utters  anything  that  is  not  the 
echo  of  Bradford  or  of  Winslow,  it  is  likely  to  be  the  echo 
of  the  common  opinion  or  passion  of  the  community  in 
which  he  passed  his  painstaking  life,  fie  squares  off,  for 
example,  against  poor  Samuel  Gorton — the  favorite  target 
of  orthodox  New  England  invectives  in  those  days — and 
safely  pommels  with  blows  a  man  who  was  already  down, 


1  The  reader  who  cares  to  verify  this  statement  may  make  comparison  of 
the  following  passages,  first  in  Davis**  edition  of  Morton's  "  Memorial,"  and 
second  in  Bradford's  History: 

Pages  19-20  of  Morton  with  pages  23-24  of  Bradford. 
"      23-24  "       "         "         "     59-6o  "         " 

-  30-32  "       "         "         "     67-70  "        " 

-  35-36  "       -         "        "     78-79  "         * 
•  Morton's  "  Memorial,"  16. 


1 28  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITER  A  TURE. 

and  whom  everybody  else  was  pommelling.1  A  far  greater 
man  than  Samuel  Gorton,  Roger  Williams,  was  handled 
by  the  historian  in  the  same  manner,  and  apparently  for 
the  same  reason.2  The  historian  was  in  no  respect  su- 
perior to  his  age  ;  and  the  venom  and  the  pettiness  of  his 
age  mix  themselves  with  the  ink  that  flows  from  his  pen. 

For  nearly  two  hundred  years  his  book  has  enjoyed  the 
reputation  of  an  original  and  a  classic  document  in  our 
early  annals.  Thomas  Prince,  the  historian,  indicates  its 
great  celebrity  in  his  time  by  the  remark  that  in  his  own 
childhood  next  to  religious  history  he  was  instructed  in 
the  history  of  New  England,  and  that  the  first  book  put 
into  his  hands  upon  the  latter  subject  was  Morton's  "  Me- 
morial."3 Since  the  recent  publication  of  Bradford's  his- 
tory, however,  that  of  Morton  has  declined  rapidly  to- 
ward the  fate  of  being  utterly  unread.  Henceforward 
they  who  wish  to  seek  our  earliest  history  at  its  head 
waters  will  of  course  pass  by  Nathaniel  Morton,  and  draw 
from  the  same  limpid  and  sweet  well-spring  that  he  drew 
from. 

IV. 

In  the  early  spring  of  the  year  1630,  a  fleet  of  four  ves- 
sels sailed  out  into  the  sea  from  a  beautiful  harbor  in  the 
Isle  of  Wight,  their  prows  pointed  westward.  On  board 
that  fleet  were  the  greatest  company  of  wealthy  and  cul- 

1  Morton's  "  Memorial,"  202-206.  He  describes  Gorton  as  "  a  proud  and 
pestilent  seducer,  and  deeply  leavened  with  blasphemous  and  familistical 
opinions." 

!  A  letter  of  Roger  Williams's  has  lately  come  to  light,  written  in  the  very 
year  in  which  Morton's  "  Memorial  "  was  published,  and  referring  with 
characteristic  magnanimity  and  playfulness  to  Morton's  habit  of  praising  the 
saints  who  fitted  the  regnant  fashion  of  New  England  piety,  and  of  damning 
those  who  fitted  it  not.  The  letter  is  addressed  to  his  dear  friend,  the  younger 
Winthrop :  "  Sir,  since  I  saw  you,  I  have  read  Morton's  '  Memorial,'  and 
rejoice  at  the  encomiums  of  your  father  and  other  precious  worthies,  though 
I  be  a  reprobate,  contemptd  vilior  algd."  Narr.  Club  Pub.  VI.  333. 

"Prince.  "Chron.  Hist.  N.  E."  Pref. 


JOHN  WINTHROP.  I2g 

tivated  persons  that  have  ever  emigrated  in  any  one  voy- 
age from  England  to  America.  They  were  prosperous 
English  Puritans.  They  had  in  England  houses  and  lands 
and  social  consideration.  With  all  the  faults  of  England, 
in  church  and  state,  they  loved  her  still.  Their  departure 
from  England  was  not  the  effort  of  poverty  in  an  old  coun- 
try seeking  to  better  itself  in  a  new  one,  nor  of  smirched 
reputations  fleeing  away  to  find  in  distance  the  solace  of 
being  unknown,  nor  of  uneasy  spirits  changing  their  abode 
on  account  of  the  mere  frenzy  for  changing  something. 
Their  expatriation  was  their  own  act ;  and  it  was  prompted 
both  by  the  noblest  self-denial  and  by  the  shrewdest  states- 
manship. 

Foremost  among  them  in  intellectual  power  and  in 
weight  of  character  was  John  Winthrop,  already  chosen 
governor  of  the  Massachusetts  company,  and  qualified  by 
every  personal  trait  to  be  the  conductor  and  the  statesman 
of  the  new  Puritan  colony  of  Massachusetts  Bay.  He  was 
then  just  forty-two  years  old.  Born  at  Groton,  in  Suffolk, 
of  a  family  honored  in  that  neighborhood  for  its  high  char- 
acter and  its  wealth,  he  had  been  trained  to  the  law,  as 
his  father  and  his  grandfather  had  been  before  him.  He 
was  a  man  of  good  books  and  of  good  manners ;  catholic 
in  opinion  and  sympathy ;  a  deeply  conscientious  man ; 
not  willing  that  his  life  should  be  a  thing  of  extemporized 
policies  and  make-shifts,  but  building  it  up  clear  from  the 
foundation  on  solid  principle. 

The  little  fleet  that  carried  to  New  England  John  Win- 
throp and  his  fortunes,  was  more  than  two  months  upon 
the  voyage  ;  and  he  made  such  use  of  this  sea-born  leisure, 
that  we  have  occasion  to  commemorate  it  yet.  Brood- 
ing upon  the  new  life  they  were  about  to  begin  in  the 
new  land,  he  saw  that  only  in  one  way  could  it  be 
saved  from  becoming  base,  discordant,  and  disappointing: 
that  way  was  by  their  carrying  into  it,  for  every  day  and 
for  every  act,  the  Christ-like  spirit  of  disinterestedness. 
The  thought  grew  in  his  mind  and  asserted  itself  in  the 
9 


1 30  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITER  A  TURE. 

form  of  a  little  treatise  which  he  entitled  "  A  Model  of 
Christian  Charity." l  It  is  an  elaborate  exposition  of  the 
Christian  doctrine  of  unselfishness,  and  bears  especially 
upon  the  condition  awaiting  the  colonists  in  the  new, 
perilous,  and  struggling  life  toward  which  they  were  going. 
It  shows  that  if  each  man  be  for  himself,  their  great  en- 
terprise would  come  to  nothing.  Only  by  mutual  love 
and  help,  and  a  grand,  patient  self-denial,  could  they  all 
meet  the  tasks  that  lay  before  them.  "  We  must  be  knit 
together  in  this  work  as  one  man.  We  must  entertain 
each  other  in  brotherly  affection.  We  must  be  willing 
to  abridge  ourselves  of  our  superfluities  for  the  supply  of 
other's  necessities.  We  must  uphold  a  familiar  commerce 
together  in  all  meekness,  gentleness,  patience,  and  liber- 
ality. We  must  delight  in  each  other  ;  make  other's 
conditions  our  own ;  rejoice  together,  mourn  together, 
labor  and  suffer  together,  always  having  before  our  eyes 
our  commission  and  community  in  the  work  as  members 
of  the  same  body."  2 

As  John  Winthrop,  while  upon  the  voyage,  wrote  this 
discourse  to  prepare  the  spirits  of  himself  and  his  asso- 
ciates for  the  toils  and  frets  and  depressions  of  their  pio- 
neer life,  so  also  immediately  upon  going  on  board  ship 
he  began  another  piece  of  writing,  which  he  continued  to 
work  at  not  only  during  the  rest  of  the  voyage  but  during 
the  rest  of  his  life,  and  which  is  a  treasure  beyond  price 
among  our  early  historic  memorials.  It  was  on  Easter 
Monday,  March  the  twenty-ninth,  1630,  his  ships  still 
riding  in  the  harbor  of  Cowes,  that  he  wrote  the  first 
record  in  that  journal  of  his  which  grew  to  be  "The  His- 
tory of  New  England."  His  plan  was  to  jot  down  signifi- 
cant experiences  in  the  daily  life  of  his  company,  not  only 
while  at  sea  but  after  their  arrival  in  America, — thus 
writing  their  history  as  fast  as  they  should  make  it.  Ac- 
cordingly, the  long  voyage  is  registered  in  an  almost  daily 


1  Printed  in  3  Mass.  Hist.  Soc.  Coll.  VII.  31-48.  2  Ibid.  46-47. 


JOHN  WIN  Til  HOP.  131 

chronicle,  giving  faithful  mention  of  the  changes  of  the 
winds,  the  various  behavior  of  the  ocean,  the  routine  and 
the  caprices  of  ship-life,  the  temperate  diversion  afforded 
by  daily  prayers  and  frequent  sermons,  the  interchange  of 
social  courtesies  between  the  passengers  belonging  to  the 
different  vessels,  and  such  other  items  as  were  wont  to  fill 
up  the  sluggish  days  of  sea-travel  in  the  seventeenth  cen- 
tury. At  last,  on  the  eighth  of  June,  "  we  had  sight  of  land 
to  the  north-west  about  ten  leagues.  .  .  .  We  had  now 
fair  sunshine  weather,  and  so  pleasant  a  sweet  air  as  did 
much  refresh  us,  and  there  came  a  smell  off  the  shore  like 
the  smell  of  a  garden." ! 

For  one  in  Winthrop's  station  the  end  of  his  voyage  was 
the  end  of  his  leisure  ;  and  his  journal  thenceforward  shows 
that  he  had  too  much  to  do  every  day  to  write  much  about 
it.  Here  are  frequent  breaks  and  blanks  in  the  record, 
rallyings  of  remembrance,  many  a  great  day  having  to 
content  itself  with  small  mention,  tokens  enough  that  the 
resolute  diarist  was  forced  to  wrestle  continually  with  the 
temptation  of  yielding  all  to  the  overpowering  encroach- 
ments of  haste  and  fatigue.  Yet,  in  spite  of  all,  he  kept  on 
sturdily,  making  such  headway  as  he  could,  fixing  a  date 
even  when  he  could  not  expand  a  scene,  and  securing  to 
us,  notwithstanding  all  interruption  and  reticence,  a  clear, 
true  story  of  the  way  in  which  the  fathers  and  mothers  of 
the  commonwealth  of  Massachusetts  labored  and  suffered 
in  the  days  of  that  stern  beginning.  For  almost  twenty 
years  the  story  went  forward,  from  1630  until  a  few  weeks 
before  the  writer's  death  in  1649.  It  is  quite  evident  that 
Winthrop  wrote  what  he  did  with  the  full  purpose  of  hav- 
ing it  published  as  a  history ;  but  he  wrote  it  amid  the 
hurry  and  weariness  of  his  unloitering  life,  with  no  anxiety 
about  style,  with  no  other  purpose  than  to  tell  the  truth 
in  plain  and  honest  fashion.  The  native  qualities  of  the 
man  were  lofty,  self-respecting,  grave ;  by  culture  and 

1  John  Winthrop,  "  Hist  N.  E."  I.  27. 


132 


HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITER  A  TURE. 


habit  he  expressed  himself  spontaneously  in  dignified  and 
calm  words ;  and  at  times,  when  the  thought  lifted  him, 
he  rose  to  a  stately  unconscious  eloquence.  He  was  no 
artist,  only  a  thinker  and  a  doer.  Of  course  he  never  aimed 
at  effect.  His  moral  qualities  are  plainly  stamped  upon 
his  manner  of  expression — moderation,  disinterestedness, 
reverence,  pity,  dignity,  love  of  truth  and  of  justice.  The 
prevailing  tone  is  judicial :  he  tells  the  truth  squarely,  even 
against  himself.  The  greatest  incidents  in  the  life  of  the 
colony  are  reported ;  also  the  least.  The  pathos,  and 
heroism,  and  pettiness  of  their  life,  all  are  here.  "  My 
son,  Henry  Winthrop,  was  drowned  at  Salem."1  "  A  cow 
died  at  Plymouth,  and  a  goat  at  Boston,  with  eating  In- 
dian corn."  2  "  Monday  we  kept  a  court."3  "  The  rivers 
were  frozen  up,  and  they  of  Charlestown  could  not  come 
to  the  sermon  at  Boston  till  the  afternoon  at  high  water."4 
"  Billington  executed  at  Plymouth  for  murdering  one."5 
"  The  governor  and  deputy  and  Mr.  Nowell  .  .  .  went  to 
Watertown  to  confer  with  Mr.  Phillips,  the  pastor,  and 
Mr.  Brown,  the  elder  of  the  congregation  there,  about  an 
opinion  which  they  had  published  that  the  churches  of 
Rome  were  true  churches.  The  matter  was  debated  be- 
fore many  of  both  congregations,  and  by  the  approba- 
tion of  all  the  assembly  except  three,  was  concluded  an 
error."6  "  The  night  before,  alarm  was  given  in  divers  of 
the  plantations.  It  arose  through  the  shooting  off  some 
pieces  at  Watertown  by  occasion  of  a  calf  which  Sir  Rich- 
ard Saltonstall  had  lost."7  "  At  the  same  court  one  Henry 
Linne  was  whipped  and  banished  for  writing  letters  into 
England  full  of  slander  against  our  government  and  orders 
of  our  churches."  8  "  The  governor  went  on  foot  to  Aga- 
wam,  and  because  the  people  there  wanted  a  minister, 
spent  the  Sabbath  with  them,  and  exercised  by  way  of 
prophecy,  and  returned  home  the  tenth."  9 

1  John  Winthrop,  "  Hist.  N.  E."  I.    34.  *  Ibid.  44. 

»  Ibid.  35.  « Ibid.  47.  *  Ibid.  43-  '  Ibid.  70. 

T  Ibid.  59.  8  Ibid.  73.  •  Ibid.  154-155- 


JOHN  WINTHROP. 


133 


That  last  bit  of  narration  is  delightful  for  the  clear 
glimpse  it  gives  us  of  the  spirit  of  early  New  England 
society,  and  of  the  plain  devout  ways  of  "  the  governor  " 
himself.  Again  and  again  this  good  governor  comes  into 
the  story,  always  in  thoroughly  modest  reference.  Once, 
he  tells  us,  he  got  benighted  in  the  woods,  and  had  to  pass 
the  whole  night  there ;  and  out  of  this  arose  an  amusing 
little  incident,  which,  with  the  peril  it  involved  of  having 
his  moral  reputation  misconstrued,  he  faithfully  relates,  all 
unconscious  of  the  somewhat  comic  aspect  in  which  he 
would  thus  present  himself  for  a  moment  to  the  contem- 
plation of  posterity:  "The  governor  being  at  his  farm- 
house at  Mistick,  walked  out  after  supper,  and  took  a  piece 
in  his  hand,  supposing  he  might  see  a  wolf ;  .  .  .  and  be- 
ing about  half  a  mile  off,  it  grew  suddenly  dark,  so  as,  in 
coming  home,  he  mistook  his  path,  and  went  till  he  came 
to  a  little  house  of  Sagamore  John,  which  stood  empty. 
There  he  stayed ;  and  having  a  piece  of  match  in  his 
pocket  (for  he  always  carried  about  him  match  and  a  com- 
pass, and  in  summer-time  snake-weed)  he  made  a  good 
fire  near  the  house,  and  lay  down  upon  some  old  mats 
which  he  found  there,  and  so  spent  the  night,  sometimes 
walking  by  the  fire,  sometimes  singing  psalms,  and  some- 
times getting  wood,  but  could  not  sleep.  It  was  through 
God's  mency  a  warm  night ;  but  a  little  before  day  it 
began  to  rain,  and  having  no  cloak  he  made  shift  by  a 
long  pole  to  climb  up  into  the  house.  In  the  morning 
there  came  thither  an  Indian  squaw :  but  perceiving  her 
before  she  had  opened  the  door,  he  barred  her  out ;  yet 
she  stayed  there  a  great  while,  essaying  to  get  in,  and 
at  last  she  went  away,  and  he  returned  safe  home,  his 
servants  having  been  much  perplexed  for  him,  and  hav- 
ing walked  about,  and  shot  off  pieces,  and  hallooed  in 
the  night;  but  he  heard  them  not."1 

There  lived  in  those  days  near  Medford  a  farmer  named 

'  John  Winthrop,  ••  Hist.  N.  E."  I.  74-75- 


134 


HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 


Dalkin  ;  and  to  him  and  his  wife  there  happened  a  gro- 
tesque experience  to  which  they  are  indebted  for  being 
immortalized  in  Winthrop's  usually  solemn  pages.  They 
were  coming  home  by  night,  and  had  to  cross  the  river  at 
the  ford  before  the  tide  had  fallen.  "The  husband  adven- 
tured over,  and  finding  it  too  deep  persuaded  his  wife  to 
stay  awhile ;  but  it  raining  very  sore,  she  would  needs 
adventure  over,  and  was  carried  away  with  the  stream  past 
her  depth.  Her  husband,  not  daring  to  go  help  her, 
cried  out ;  and  thereupon  his  dog,  being  at  his  house  near 
by,  came  forth,  and  seeing  something  in  the  water  swam 
to  her;  and  she  caught  hold  on  the  dog's  tail,  so  he  drew 
her  to  the  shore  and  saved  her  life."  l 

There  is  in  this  history  one  vein  of  writing  that  is  of 
deep  interest  to  us  now  for  its  frank  mention  of  certain 
strange  psychological  phenomena  in  the  experience  of  our 
ancestors.  Living  as  they  did  on  a  narrow  strip  of  land, 
between  the  two  infinities  of  the  ocean  and  the  wilder- 
ness, and  under  the  consciousness  that  the  mysteries  of 
the  unseen  world  were  close  about  them,  it  is  not  strange 
that  they  fell  into  glooms  and  fantasies.  They  had  over- 
powering manifestations  of  spiritual  force ;  they  heard 
awful  voices  in  the  air ;  strange  sights  glimmered  before 
their  eyes  on  the  verge  of  the  forest,  or  flitted  along 
the  sea.  Of  all  this,  here  are  characteristic  examples: 
"  About  midnight  three  men  coming  in  a  boat  to  Boston, 
saw  two  lights  arise  out  of  the  water  near  the  north  point 
of  the  town  cove,  in  form  like  a  man,  and  went  at  a  small 
distance  to  the  town,  and  so  to  the  south  point,  and  there 
vanished  away.  They  saw  them  about  a  quarter  of  an 
hour,  being  between  the  town  and  the  governor's  garden. 
The  like  was  seen  by  many,  a  week  after,  arising  about 
Castle  Island,  and  in  one  fifth  of  an  hour  came  to  John  Gal- 
lop's Point.  ...  A  light  like  the  moon  arose  about  the 
north-east  point  in  Boston,  and  met  the  former  at  Nettle's 

1  John  Wimhrop.  "  Hist.  N.  E."  II.  195. 


JOHN  WINTHROP.  ^5 

Island,  and  there  they  closed  in  one,  and  then  parted,  and 
closed  and  parted  divers  times,  and  so  went  over  the  hill 
in  the  island  and  vanished.  Sometimes  they  shot  out 
flames,  and  sometimes  sparkles.  This  was  about  eight  of 
the  clock  in  the  evening,  and  was  seen  by  many.  About 
the  same  time  a  voice  was  heard  upon  the  water  between 
Boston  and  Dorchester,  calling  out  in  a  most  dreadful 
manner,  '  Boy !  boy  !  come  away  !  come  away  ! '  and  it 
suddenly  shifted  from  one  place  to  another  a  great  dis- 
tance about  twenty  times.  It  was  heard  by  divers  godly 
persons."1 

There  is  one  portion  of  this  History  that  has  acquired 
great  celebrity:  it  is  the  one  embodying  Winthrop's 
speech,  in  1645,  in  the  general  court,  on  his  being  acquitted 
of  the  charge  of  having  exceeded  his  authority  as  deputy- 
governor.  The  speech  as  a  whole,  especially  when  read 
in  connection  with  the  touching  circumstances  of  its  de- 
livery, is  one  of  great  nobility,  pathos,  and  grave  elo- 
quence;1 and  one  passage  of  it,  containing  Winthrop's 
statement  of  the  nature  of  liberty,  is  of  pre-eminent  merit, 
worthy  of  being  placed  by  the  side  of  the  weightiest  and 
most  magnanimous  sentences  of  John  Locke  or  Algernon 
Sidney.  A  distinguished  American  publicist  has  declared 
that  this  is  the  best  definition  of  liberty  in  the  English 
languaget  and  that  in  comparison  with  it  what  Blackstone 
says  about  liberty  seems  puerile.  "  The  great  questions," 
says  VVinthrop,  "  that  have  troubled  the  country,  are  about 
the  authority  of  the  magistrates  and  the  liberty  of  the 
people.  .  .  .  Concerning  liberty,  I  observe  a  great  mis- 
take in  the  country  about  that.  There  is  a  twofold  liberty, 
natural,  .  .  .  and  civil  or  federal.  The  first  is  common 
to  man  with  beasts  and  other  creatures.  By  this,  man,  as 
he  stands  in  relation  to  man  simply,  hath  liberty  to  do 


1  John  Winthrop,  ••  Hist.  N.  E."  II.  184-185. 

*  For  instances  of  European  comment  upon  it,  see  "  Life  and  Letters  of 
John  Winthrop,"  IL  342-343. 


!  36  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITER  A  TURE. 

what  he  lists ;  it  is  a  liberty  to  evil  as  well  as  to  good. 
This  liberty  is  incompatible  and  inconsistent  with  author- 
ity, and  cannot  endure  the  least  restraint  of  the  most  just 
authority.  The  exercise  and  maintaining  of  this  liberty 
makes  men  grow  more  evil,  and  in  time  to  be  worse  than 
brute  beasts  :  omnes  sumus  liccntid  deteriores. 1  This  is  that 
great  enemy  of  truth  and  peace,  that  wild  beast,  which  all 
the  ordinances  of  God  are  bent  against,  to  restrain  and 
subdue  it.  The  other  kind  of  liberty  I  call  civil  or  fed- 
eral ;  it  may  also  be  termed  moral,  in  reference  to  the 
covenant  between  God  and  man,  in  the  moral  law,  and  the 
politic  covenants  and  constitutions  amongst  men  them- 
selves. This  liberty  is  the  proper  end  and  object  of 
authority,  and  cannot  subsist  without  it ;  and  it  is  a 
liberty  to  that  only  which  is  good,  just,  and  honest.  This 
liberty  you  are  to  stand  for,  with  the  hazard  not  only 
of  your  goods  but  of  your  lives,  if  need  be.  Whatsoever 
crosseth  this,  is  not  authority,  but  a  distemper  thereof. 
This  liberty  is  maintained  and  exercised  in  a  way  of  sub- 
jection to  authority;  it  is  of  the  same  kind  of  liberty 
wherewith  Christ  hath  made  us  free.  ...  If  you  stand 
for  your  natural  corrupt  liberties,  and  will  do  what  is  good 
in  your  own  eyes,  you  will  not  endure  the  least  weight  of 
authority,  but  will  murmur,  and  oppose,  and  be  always 
striving  to  shake  off  that  yoke ;  but  if  you  will  be  satisfied 
to  enjoy  such  civil  and  lawful  liberties,  such  as  Christ 
allows  you,  then  will  you  quietly  and  cheerfully  submit 
unto  that  authority  which  is  set  over  you,  in  all  the  admin- 
istrations of  it,  for  your  good.  Wherein,  if  we  fail  at  any 
time,  we  hope  we  shall  be  willing  by  God's  assistance  to 
hearken  to  good  advice  from  any  of  you,  or  in  any  other 
way  of  God  ;  so  shall  your  liberties  be  preserved  in  uphold- 
ing the  honor  and  power  of  authority  amongst  you."2 


1  The  governor  thus  recalled,  with  a  slight  variation  in  the  order  of  the 
words,  aline  from  Terence,  Heautontimorumenos,  III.  I,  74. 
4  John  Winthrop,  "  Hist.  N.  E."  II.  279-282. 


EDWARD  JOHNSON.  137 


V. 


The  explorer  of  our  early  literature  meets  at  many  a 
turn  in  his  wanderings  one  title  whose  quaintness  appeals 
to  his  imagination  as  well  as  to  his  curiosity :  "  The  Won- 
der-Working  Providence  of  Zion's  Saviour  in  New  Eng- 
land." The  book  to  which  this  title  belongs  was  written 
by  a  man  who  had  made  something  of  a  name  in  his  day 
for  quite  other  things  than  writing  books,  Captain  Edward 
Johnson,  immigrant  in  1630  to  New  England  from  Herne 
Hill,  in  Kent ;  a  man  of  property  in  both  countries;  prin- 
cipal founder  of  the  town  of  Woburn,  in  Massachusetts, 
in  1640;  and  from  that  year  until  his  death  in  1672,  en- 
trusted by  his  fellow-townsmen  with  almost  every  respon- 
sible office  they  had  to  bestow — town-clerk,  delegate  to 
the  general  court,  and  so  forth.  He  was  a  very  devout 
and  explicit  Puritan ;  his  square,  stalwart  common-sense 
made  itself  felt  in  public  and  private  ;  he  had  a  strong 
taste  and  aptitude  for  military  affairs;  and  it  is  significant 
of  his  soundness  of  brain  that,  amid  the  general  frenzy  of 
the  early  witchcraft  excitement,  he  was  one  of  the  few 
that  kept  their  heads  cool  and  opposed  all  judicial  pros- 
ecution of  those  uncomely  hags  that  were  suspected  of 
unlawful  intimacy  with  the  devil. 

Had  a  man  like  this — a  ship-carpenter  and  farmer,  un- 
lettered, unversed  in  affairs,  a  sort  of  rural  alderman  and 
militia-hero — lived  anywhere  else  than  in  New  England  in 
the  seventeenth  century,  we  should  by  no  means  have 
suspected  him  of  any  inclinations  toward  authorship.  But 
whatever  inclinations  of  this  kind  he  had  he  could  not 
help ;  for  there  was  so  earnest  and  stimulating  a  quality  in 
the  grand  tasks  which  these  men  of  New  England  had 
undertaken  in  the  world,  that  even  ship-carpenters  and 
country-politicians  could  not  escape  the  occasional  pro- 
pensity to  clutch  the  pen,  and  rough-hew  a  handful  of 
sentences,  especially  when  any  good  thing  was  to  be  ac- 


1 38  HISTOR  y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE 

complished  by  the  job.  It  was  no  ambition  of  authorship 
that  prompted  Edward  Johnson  to  write  his  book,  but  an 
important  tangible  result  which  could  be  achieved  in  no 
other  way.  He  handled  the  pen  as  he  did  the  sword  and 
the  broadaxe — to  accomplish  something  with  it ;  and  the 
precise  object  just  then  before  him  was  this.  Through 
such  unfriendly  gossips  as  Sir  Christopher  Gardiner,  Philip 
Ratcliff,  and  Thomas  Morton,  the  people  of  England  had 
been  all  along  receiving  ill  tidings  of  the  people  of  Massa- 
chusetts ;  and  it  was  somebody's  duty  to  put  down  these 
lies  by  the  truth.  The  truth  was  well  known  to  Edward 
Johnson.  Why  might  it  not  be  the  duty  of  Edward  John- 
son to  tell  it  ?  To  him  it  seemed  plain  that  the  planting 
of  God's  church  and  state  in  New  England  was  a  thing 
that  God  himself  had  taken  a  very  active  part  in,  in 
fact  was  directly  responsible  for ;  that  instead  of  being 
calumniated,  it  ought  to  be  celebrated ;  and  that  the 
straightforward  way  of  doing  this  would  be  merely  to  give 
a  history  of  the  wonder-working  providence  of  God  in  the 
country  spoken  of.1  This  single  object,  held  steadily  be- 
fore him  as  he  wrote,  gave  an  epic  unity  to  his  work,  and 
makes  it  strong  and  interesting  yet,  notwithstanding  the 
literary  clumsiness  of  the  author. 

The  significance  and  the  glory  of  God's  intervention  in 
all  that  mighty  business  of  erecting  a  great  religious  com- 
monwealth in  America  could  not  be  felt  without  a  knowl- 
edge of  the  dismal  state  of  England  at  the  time  God  be- 
gan to  rescue  his  chosen  ones  from  it.  Accordingly,  the 
book  opens  with  a  homely  but  graphic  picture  of  "  the  sad 
condition  of  England  when  this  people  removed."  It  was 
in  this  dark  time  that  "  Christ  the  glorious  king  of  his 
churches"  came  to  their  deliverance;  and  in  1628,  he 
stirred  up  his  heralds  to  make  this  proclamation  :  "  All 

1  His  book,  "  Wonder- Working  Providence  of  Zion's  Saviour  in  New  Eng- 
land," was  first  published  anonymously  in  London  in  1654;  reprinted  in 
2  Mass.  Hist.  Soc.  Coll.  II.  III.  IV.  VII.  VIII.  ;  again  reprinted,  with  elat> 
orate  introduction  and  notes  by  Wm.  Frederick  Poole,  Andover,  1867. 


ED  WA  KD  JOHNSON.  !  39 

you,  the  people  of  Christ  that  are  here  oppressed,  im- 
prisoned, and  scurrilously  derided,  gather  yourselves  to- 
gether, your  wives  and  little  ones,  and  answer  to  your 
several  names,  as  you  shall  be  shipped  for  his  service  in 
the  western  world,  and  more  especially  for  planting  the 
united  colonies  of  New  England,  where  you  are  to  attend 
the  service  of  the  King  of  Kings."  * 

Here  we  have  the  clue  to  the  whole  book.  The  depart- 
ure from  England,  the  long  peril  on  "a  dreadful  and 
terrible  ocean,"  and  the  erection  of  a  pure  church  in  "  the 
far-remote  and  vast  wilderness,"  are  but  the  successive 
stages  in  a  stupendous  religious  campaign,  inaugurated  by 
Christ  for  a  hallowed  purpose,  and  sustained  by  him  with 
marvellous  exhibitions  of  divine  power.  Their  emigration 
was,  in  the  author's  view,  not  a  secular  act  but  a  sacred 
one ;  they  who  went  to  New  England  went  upon  a  spirit- 
ual crusade  ;  they  were  not  adventurers,  wandering  traders 
and  agriculturists  seeking  earthly  gain,  but  soldiers  of 
Christ,  doing  battle  under  his  banner,  fighting  in  a  holy 
war,  and  looking  for  their  reward  beyond  the  clouds.  The 
whole  book  is  pervaded  by  this  thought ;  and  a  thousand 
incidental  phrases  express  it.  The  colonists  are  "  brethren 
and  fellow-soldiers;"1  the  addition  at  one  time  of  forty- 
six  freemen  is  the  addition  of  so  many  "  soldiers  listed; "' 
in  looking  about  upon  their  antagonists  they  "  face  to  the 
right,"  they  "  face  to  the  front,"  they  "  face  to  the  left ;  "4 
and  the  great  service  of  "  this  poor  people  "  in  populating 
the  "  howling  desert,"  is  simply  "  marching  manfully  on — 
the  Lord  assisting — through  the  greatest  difficulties  and 
forest  labors  that  ever  any  with  such  weak  means  have 
done."8 

Believing  thus  with  a  stanch  and  literal  faith  that  they 
were  volunteers  in  the  immediate  service  of  their  "  great 
Lord  Paramount,"  they  had  the  invincible  cheer  and 

1  "  Wonder-working  Providence,"  a.  •  Ibid.  17. 

»  Ibid.  56.  4  Ibid.  113.  •  Ibid.  84-85- 


140 


HJSTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITER  A  TURE. 


courage  of  knowing  that  he  "  stood  not  as  an  idle  spec- 
tator  beholding  his  people's  ruth  and  their  enemies'  rage, 
but  as  an  actor  in  all  actions,  to  bring  to  naught  the 
desires  of  the  wicked,  .  .  .  having  also  the  ordering  of 
every  weapon  in  its  first  produce,  guiding  every  shaft  that 
flies,  leading  each  bullet  to  his  place  of  settling,  and  wea- 
pon to  the  wound  it  makes."  l  Under  such  a  leader,  upon 
such  a  crusade,  the  humblest  soldier  was  ennobled,  and 
the  pettiest  undertaking  made  grand  :  •'  for  the  Lord  Christ 
intends  to  achieve  greater  matters  by  this  little  handful 
than  the  world  is  aware  of ;  "  and  "  although  it  may  seem 
a  mean  thing  to  be  a  New  England  soldier,"  yet  some  of 
them  were  to  "  have  the  battering  and  beating  down,  scal- 
ing, winning,  and  wasting  the  overtopping  towers  of  the 
hierarchy."2  And  as  the  august  leadership  and  the  sub- 
lime service  under  which  they  marched  gave  rank  and 
stateliness  to  them  and  to  their  small  doings,  so  it  lifted 
them  out  of  timidity  and  petulance,  and  armed  them  with 
a  virtue  that  could  defy  both  temptation  and  pain :  "  As 
Death,  the  King  of  Terror,  with  all  his  dreadful  attend- 
ance inhumane  and  barbarous,  tortures  doubled  and  trebled 
by  all  the  infernal  furies,  have  appeared  but  light  and  mo- 
mentary to  the  soldiers  of  Christ  Jesus,  so  also  the  pleasure, 
profits,  and  honors  of  this  world,  set  forth  in  their  most 
glorious  splendor  and  magnitude  by  the  alluring  Lady  of 
Delight,  proffering  pleasant  embraces,  cannot  entice  with 
her  siren  songs  such  soldiers  of  Christ,  whose  aims  are 
elevated  by  him  many  millions  above  that  brave  warrior 
Ulysses."8 

But  from  premises  like  these  followed  some  stern  and 
terrible  conclusions;  for  if  they  were  actual  soldiers  of 
Christ,  and  in  a  state  of  war,  any  toleration  of  disbelievers 
was  an  enormous  military  crime — it  was  giving  aid  and 
comfort  to  the  enemy.  Hence  came,  by  a  logic  that  had 

1  "  Wonder- Working  Providence,"  116.  *  Ibid.  10-11. 

8  Ibid.  25. 


EDWARD  JOHNSON.  !4! 

in  it  no  flaw,  the  whole  dire  philosophy  and  ethics  of  per- 
secution: "You  are  not  set  up  for  tolerating  times,  nor 
shall  any  of  you  be  content  with  this  that  you  are  set  at 
liberty ;  but  take  up  your  arms  and  march  manfully  on  till 
all  opposers  of  Christ's  kingly  power  be  abolished.  And 
as  for  you  who  are  called  to  sound  forth  his  silver  trum- 
pets, blow  loud  and  shrill  to  this  chiefest  treble  tune — for 
the  armies  of  the  great  Jehovah  are  at  hand."1 

It  is  in  this  spirit  of  rapt  and  austere  Puritan  confidence, 
that  Edward  Johnson  wrote  his  history  of  New  England 
from  the  establishment  of  Salem  in  1628,  to  the  time  of 
John  Endicott's  governorship  in  1651.  His  words  are 
those  of  a  spectator  of  most  of  the  events  which  he  de- 
scribes. He  omits  many  things  which  we  should  now  like 
to  read  of,  but  which  did  not  so  immediately  illustrate  the 
religious  significance  of  New  England  life.  He  tells  par- 
ticularly the  story  of  the  successive  formation  of  towns 
and  churches,  as  the  people  pushed  inland,  and  up  and 
down  the  coast.  He  chronicles  the  annual  elections  of 
governor  and  deputy-governor;  the  arrival  of  godly  minis- 
ters from  England  ;  the  troubles  incident  to  all  primitive 
settlements  in  a  rough  country  and  in  a  harsh  climate  ; 
Indian  wars ;  religious  controversies ;  and,  in  general,  the 
pangs  and  risks  and  deliverances  of  God's  chosen  troops 
in  their  appointed  campaign  in  the  wilderness. 

The  value  of  this  book,  of  course,  is  not  that  which  at- 
taches to  what  we  commonly  call  history.  Here  are  lack- 
ing impartiality,  coolness,  comprehensiveness,  critical  judg- 
ment, and  the  delight  of  a  masterly  and  sweet  expression. 
It  is  crude  enough  in  thought  and  style,  avowedly  parti- 
san, and  pitched  upon  a  key  of  wild  religious  rhapsody. 
Yet  with  all  its  limitations,  it  is  the  sincere  testimony  of 
an  eye-witness  and  an  honest  man  ;  it  preserves  the  very 
spirit  and  aroma  of  New  England  thought  and  experience 
in  the  seventeenth  century ;  it  supplies  us  with  a  multitude 

i  "  Wonder- Working  Providence,"  7-     See  also  90.  91,  101. 


142 


HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 


of  tints  and  tones  which,  without  this  book,  we  should  not 
have ;  its  very  faults  of  diction,  its  grotesque  and  fanatic 
zeal,  its  narrowness,  its  harshness,  its  frank  and  blood- 
thirsty Hebraisms,  its  touching  and  sublime  simplicity  of 
trust,  its  choice  of  what  is  noble  and  everlasting  in  exist- 
ence, its  disdain  of  lies  and  toys  and  fleshly  phantoms,  all 
make  it  a  most  authentic  and  a  priceless  memorial  of 
American  character  and  life  in  the  heroic  epoch  of  our 
earliest  men. 

An  admirable  quality  in  the  book  is  its  concentrated 
sketches  of  the  leading  men  of  the  time.  Thus,  John  En- 
dicott  was  "  a  fit  instrument  to  begin  this  wilderness  work, 
of  courage  bold,  undaunted,  yet  sociable,  and  of  a  cheer- 
ful spirit,  loving  and  austere,  applying  himself  to  either 
as  occasion  served."1  His  references  to  the  great  person- 
ages in  secular  life,  Winthrop,  Sir  Harry  Vane,  Hopkins, 
Bradstreet,  and  others,  are  indeed  laudatory,  but  they  are 
cold  in  comparison  with  the  intensity  of  his  reverent  lan- 
guage concerning  the  principal  ministers  of  the  young 
nation.  The  vocabulary  of  Puritan  admiration  is  strained 
to  give  utterance  to  his  laic  affection  and  loyalty  towards 
"  the  grave,  godly,  and  judicious  Hooker,"  "  the  reverend 
and  much  desired  Mr.  John  Cotton,"  "the  rhetorical  Mr. 
Stone,"  "  the  reverend  and  holy  man  of  God,  Mr.  Nathan- 
iel Rogers,"  and  "the  holy,  heavenly,  sweet-affecting,  and 
soul-ravishing  minister,  Mr.  Thomas  Shepard."  The  nat- 
ural rebound  of  this  rapturous  enthusiasm  for  the  minis- 
ters was  an  equally  rapturous  contempt  for  their  oppo- 
nents— the  unsanctioned  preachers,  the  heretics,  babblers, 
and  illiterate  agitators  who  infested  those  pioneer  com- 
munities ;  and  in  his  opinion  all  that  was  odious  in  such 
talking  vagrants  was  brought  together  in  the  person  of  the 
troublesome  prophetess  of  New  England,  Anne  Hutchin- 
son.  He  seldom  condescends  to  mention  her  by  name; 
but  he  points  at  her  with  scornful  allusions  that  are  unmis- 

"  Wonder- Working  Providence,"  19. 


EDWARD  JOHNSON.  1.43 

takable.  She  is  the  "  woman  that  preaches  better  gos- 
pel than  any  of  your  black-coats  that  have  been  at  the 
Ninneversity  ;" !  she  is  the  "  master-piece  of  women's  wit, 
.  .  .  backed  with  the  sorcery  of  a  second  who  had 
much  converse  with  the  devil ;"  *  she  is  "  the  grand-mis- 
tress of  them  all  who  ordinarily  prated  every  Sabbath 
day."  • 

It  would  be  true  to  say  that  there  is  hardly  a  trait  of 
Puritanism,  either  noble  or  narrow  or  grim,  that  does  not 
represent  itself  in  some  line  of  this  book.  Here,  for  ex- 
ample,  we  have  in  the  author's  description  of  what  the 
ruling  elders  should  be,  the  lofty  confidence  of  Puritan- 
ism in  the  unseen  and  supernal  Righteousness:  they 
should  be  "  not  greedily  given  to  hoard  up  for  themselves, 
but  by  their  own  example  leading  others  to  liberality  and 
hospitality,  having  the  earth  in  low  esteem,  and  faith  in 
exercise  when  cattle  and  corn  fail."  *  For  the  narrowness 
of  Puritanism,  the  examples  here  at  hand  are  of  an  em- 
barrassing multitude;  but  this  may  serve.  The  belief  in  a 
present,  watchful,  and  benign  Providence,  is  the  source  of 
the  sweetest  comfort  and  the  most  perfect  fortitude  that 
can  live  in  human  nature ;  but  when  this  belief  intensifies 
itself  into  a  microscopic  and  picayune  Providence,  to  be 
interpreted  in  detail  by  man  as  an  expression  of  the  di- 
vine favor  or  wrath  in  the  case  of  every  falling  tower,  or 
launched  thunderbolt,  or  capsized  sail-boat,  or  lost  cow, 
it  becomes  a  creed  ministering  to  abject  superstition  and 
vindictiveness.  Thus,  Edward  Johnson  mentions,  as  an 
instance  of  "  the  sad  hand  of  the  Lord  "  against  a  person, 
the  case  of  a  certain  barber  of  Boston  who  was  summoned 
one  day  to  Roxbury  to  draw  a  tooth,  and  who,  being  over- 
whelmed upon  the  journey  by  a  snow-storm,  was  found 
several  days  after  frozen  to  death  :  "  in  which  sad  accident 
this  was  taken  into  consideration  by  divers  people,  that 


1  "  Wonder- Working  Providence,"  96.  »  Ibid.  ioa 

»  Ibid.  132.  •  Ibid.  5. 


144 


HISTORY  OF  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 


this  barber  was  more  than  ordinary  laborious  to  draw  men 
to  those  sinful  errors  that  were  formerly  so  frequent, 
...  he  having  a  fit  opportunity,  by  reason  of  his  trade, 
so  soon  as  any  were  set  down  in  his  chair,  he  would  com- 
monly be  cutting  off  their  hair  and  the  truth  together."  * 
And  for  the  grimness  of  Puritanism,  the  following  passage 
will  be  likely  to  satisfy  the  most  exacting.  After  describ- 
ing the  famous  war  of  extermination  against  the  Pequots, 
the  author  thus  concludes :  "  The  Lord  in  mercy  toward 
his  poor  churches,  having  thus  destroyed  these  bloody  bar- 
barous Indians,  he  returns  his  people  in  safety  to  their 
vessels,  where  they  take  account  of  their  prisoners.  The 
squaws  and  some  young  youths  they  brought  home  with 
them ;  and  finding  the  men  to  be  deeply  guilty  of  the 
crimes  they  undertook  the  war  for,  they  brought  away 
only  their  heads."2 

In  a  book  like  this  we  are  not  apt  to  expect  much 
gayety ;  but  one  may  find  in  it,  here  and  there,  some  hint 
of  an  effort  on  the  author's  part  to  relax  his  visage  into 
a  smile.  Thus,  in  one  place  he  deigns  to  speak  rather 
facetiously  of  so  serious  a  thing  as  the  Atlantic  Ocean, 
which  he  calls  in  familiar  style  "  the  ditch  between  Eng- 
land and  their  now  place  of  abode ;  "  and  he  even  pro- 
ceeds to  the  playful  remark  that  this  ditch,  forsooth, 
"  they  could  not  leap  over  with  a  lope-staff,"  8 — doubtless 
the  nearest  approach  to  a  jest  that  the  author  of  "Won- 
der-Working Providence  "  was  ever  frivolous  enough  to  in- 
dulge in. 

But  though  he  intended  it  not,  the  book  is  nevertheless 
somewhat  mirth-inspiring.  Its  very  seriousness  has  a  comic 
aspect,  most  of  all  when  it  rises  into  the  awful  shape  of 
verse ;  for,  this  retired  ship-carpenter  of  Woburn  hewed  out 
poetry  in  a  manner  worthy  of  his  original  trade.  His  first 
official  entry  in  the  town  records  of  Woburn  took  a  metri- 


"  Wonder- Working  Providence,"  138.  »  Ibid.  117.* 

8  Ibid.  20. 


EDWARD  JOHNSON.  !4g 

cal  form ;  and  in  his  history,  no  important  person  is  intro- 
duced upon  the  scene  without  some  brief  poetic  tribute. 
He  has  indeed  a  half  abashed  air,  a  virgin  coyness,  so  to 
speak,  as  he  brings  forward  these  tiny  trinkets  in  rhyme, 
as  if  he  were  himself  remotely  conscious  of  some  impro- 
priety in  the  manufacture  of  such  things  by  a  respectable 
man  like  himself ;  and  yet,  on  the  other  hand,  he  seems  to 
have  a  sturdy  faith  that  since  these  things  are  poetry, 
there  must  be  a  sort  of  immortalizing  virtue  in  them. 
"  And  now,"  says  he,  as  he  is  about  to  hold  up  before  us 
his  poetic  apostrophe  to  Governor  John  Endicott,  "  let  no 
man  be  offended  at  the  author's  rude  verse,  penned  of 
purpose  to  keep  in  memory  the  names  of  such  worthies  as 
Christ  made  strong  for  himself,  in  this  unwonted  work 
of  his."  f  One  couplet  of  this  little  poem  will  be  quite 
enough : 

"Strong  valiant  John,  wilt  thou  march  on  and  take  up  station  first, 
Christ  called  hath  thee,  his  soldier  be,  and  fail  not  of  thy  trust."* 

The  following  lines  are  a  portion  of  his  "  metre  "  com- 
posed  "  for  the  future  remembrance "  of  the  celebrated 
Hugh  Peters : 

"  With  courage,  bold  Peters,  a  soldier  stout, 
In  wilderness,  for  Christ,  begins  to  war  ; 
Much  work  he  finds  'mongst  people,  yet  holds  out ; 
With  fluent  tongue  he  stops  fantastic  jar."1 

But  even  from  the  literary  aspect  there  are  some  quali- 
ties of  this  book  that  we  may  not  use  for  our  mirth,  yea 
for  our  laughter,  when  we  are  waspish.  It  has  not  in- 
frequently, even  amid  its  most  ungainly  sentences,  a  charm 
of  picturesque  simplicity,  an  unconscious  and  unadorned 
beauty  of  honest  speech.  Speaking  of  the  work  they 
hoped  to  do  in  the  fields  when  a  certain  long  winter  should 

1  ••  Wonder-Working  Proridence,"  19.  '  Ibid.  19. 

•  Ibid.  79- 
IO 


I46  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

have  passed  away,  he  says  that  they  discoursed  "  between 
one  while  and  another,  of  the  great  progress  they  would 
make  after  the  summer's  sun  had  changed  the  earth's  white 
furred  gown  into  a  green  mantle."  l  One  of  their  Provi- 
dential deliverances  on  the  sea  as  they  were  nearing  the 
American  coast  is  thus  pictured  to  us :  "  The  night  newly 
breaking  off  her  darkness,  and  the  daylight  being  clouded 
with  a  gross  vapor,  as  if  night's  curtains  remained  half- 
shut,  the  seamen  and  passengers  standing  on  the  decks 
suddenly  fixed  their  eyes  on  a  great  boat,  as  they  deemed  ; 
and  anon  after,  they  spied  another,  and  after  that  another; 
but  musing  on  the  matter,  they  perceived  themselves  to 
be  in  great  danger  of  many  great  rocks.  With  much  ter- 
ror and  arTrightment  they  turned  the  ship  about,  expect- 
ing every  moment  to  be  dashed  in  pieces  against  the  rocks. 
But  He  whose  providence  brought  them  in,  piloted  them 
out  again,  without  any  danger,  to  their  great  rejoicing."  2 
In  speaking  of  Christ's  tenderness  and  care  toward  his 
persecuted  church,  the  author  has  a  sentence  that  anyone 
might  take  to  be  a  bit  of  the  prose  of  John  Milton : 
"  With  his  own  blessed  hands  wiping  away  the  tears  that 
trickle  down  her  cheeks,  drying  her  dankish  eyes,  and 
hushing  her  sorrowful  sobs  in  his  sweet  bosom."  3  In  the 
following  sentence,  wherein  he  cheers  up  the  good  people 
of  New  England  by  reminding  them  of  more  helpers  al- 
ready on  the  way  to  them  from  England,  one  may  hear  a 
sort  of  plaintive  and  lingering  melody :  "  There  are  for 
your  further  aid  herein  many  more  of  these  sincere  soldiers 
floating  upon  the  great  ocean  toward  you." 4 


VI. 

In  our  first  literary  period  there  remain  two  other  his- 
torical writers  who  have  this  in  common,  that  their  writ- 

1  "  Wonder- Working  Providence,"  20.  *  Ibid.  35. 

'Ibid.  117.  -Ibid.  1 18. 


INDIAN  WARS.  147 

ings  relate  to  the  Indians  of  New  England,  and  to  the 
dreadful  conflicts  that  raged  there  in  the  seventeenth 
century  between  those  Indians  and  the  white  people  who 
had  undertaken  to  settle  near  them. 

The  ability  of  the  English  to  establish  themselves  in 
New  England  in  spite  of  the  objections  of  the  original 
inhabitants,  was  tested  in  a  serious  manner  twice,  and  only 
twice.  The  first  occasion  was  in  1637  and  gave  rise  to  the 
Pequot  war;  the  second  was  in  1675  and  brought  on  King 
Philip's  war.  Of  course,  at  other  times,  before  and  after- 
ward, there  were  innumerable  petty  collisions  of  the  rival 
races,  casual  jets  of  murder,  fitful  paroxysms  of  wrath 
and  vengeance  on  both  sides ;  but  these  two  were  the 
only  occasions  on  which  the  red  men  in  that  portion  of 
the  continent,  alarmed  and  maddened  by  the  danger  ever 
swelling  and  darkening  over  them  from  the  increasing 
multitude  of  their  English  invaders,  deliberately  combined 
in  large  numbers,  formed  comprehensive  plans,  and  moved 
toward  the  extermination  of  the  English  colonists  with  a 
method  in  their  ferocity,  with  a  wide-reaching  concert  of 
action,  with  a  skill  and  a  ruthless  vigor,  that  for  a  time 
threw  some  doubt  over  the  possibility  of  preserving  the 
English  settlements  there. 

These  events  are  now  so  far  away  from  us  that  we  do 
not  realize  their  appalling  character;  but  during  the  first 
century  and  a  half  of  American  history,  the  Indian  peril 
was  the  one  frightful  fact  perpetually  hovering,  by  day 
and  by  night,  near  every  white  community.  These  two 
wars  were  the  two  great  acts  in  early  New  England  history. 
They  marked  the  heroic  epochs  of  colonial  existence.  The 
men  who,  in  these  two  wars,  led  the  colonists  to  victory 
and  to  safety  were  thenceforward  the  popular  heroes,  the 
persons  of  might  and  renown.  It  is  not  strange  that  each 
of  these  tremendous  conflicts  should  have  a  literature  of 
its  own — a  crop  of  writings  commemorative  of  events 
that  had  brought  to  every  cottage  in  New  England  so 
much  both  of  agony  and  of  exultation. 


148 


HISTORY  OF  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 


Of  the  first  of  these  wars — that  with  the  Pequots — Cap. 
tain  John  Mason  was  the  historian  as  well  as  the  hero. 
On  many  accounts  he  is  an  interesting  personage  for  us  to 
look  at  in  that  early  time.  Though  less  famous  now  than 
Captain  Miles  Standish,  he  was  in  that  age  fully  his  equal 
in  reputation,  even  as  he  fully  equalled  him  in  military 
service.  Like  Miles  Standish,  too,  he  had  been  trained  to 
warfare  in  the  Netherlands,  where  his  commander  was 
that  Sir  Thomas  Fairfax  who  afterward  became  so  dis- 
tinguished as  the  leader  of  the  parliamentary  forces  in  the 
English  civil  wars ;  and  who,  while  so  engaged,  remem- 
bered his  ancient  military  pupil  then  in  New  England, 
and  sent  to  him  an  invitation  to  come  back  to  England 
and  take  a  hand  in  the  fight  then  going  forward.  But 
John  Mason  had  important  work  to  do  in  the  new  world ; 
and  he  staid  there,  and  did  it.  And  he  did  his  work  so 
well  that  his  very  name  became  a  terror  to  the  Indian 
tribes,  and  was  a  wall  of  safety  around  the  scattered  farm- 
houses and  the  feeble  villages  of  his  pioneer  countrymen. 
Moreover  he  lived  to  a  good  old  age,  honored  to  the  last 
for  the  courage  and  the  generous  wisdom  of  his  life. 

It  was  at  the  request  of  the  general  court  of  Connecti- 
cut that  he  wrote  "The  History  of  the  Pequot  War,"1  9 
work  of  only  thirty-three  pages,  giving  a  plain  but  vigor- 
ous narrative  of  a  very  plain  and  very  vigorous  campaign. 
Naturally  enough,  the  historian  writes  not  from  documents, 
but  from  his  own  recollection  of  the  events  in  which  he 
bore  so  large  a  part.  His  style  is  that  of  a  fighter  rather 
than  of  a  writer;  there  is  an  honest  bluntness  about  it,  an 
unaffected  rough  simplicity,  a  manly  forth-rightness  of 
diction,  all  the  charm  of  authenticity  and  strength.  It  is 
fortunate  that  he  dashed  off  his  little  book  without  the 

1  First  printed  by  Increase  Mather  in  1677  in  his  "  Relation  of  the 
Troubles  "  with  the  Indians,  and  by  him  erroneously  attributed  to  John  Allyn. 
In  1736  it  was  republished  by  Thomas  Prince.  Prince's  edition  is  reprinted  in 
2  Mass.  Hist.  Coll.  VIII.  120-153,  and  the  latter  is  the  edition  referred  to  in 
the  present  work. 


CAP  TA IN  JOHN  A/A  SON.  !  49 

expectation  of  printing  it:  "I  never  had  thought  that 
this  should  have  come  to  the  press  .  .  .  ;  if  I  had,  I  should 
have  endeavored  to  have  put  a  little  more  varnish  upon 
it."1  We  like  his  bluff  narrative  all  the  more  because 
the  varnish  was  left  off ;  and  we  like  him  all  the  more  as 
we  get  acquainted  with  the  modest  and  frank  spirit  in 
which  he  wrote  it.  "  I  shall  only  draw  the  curtain,"  he 
says,  "  and  open  my  little  casement,  that  so  others  of  larger 
hearts  and  abilities  may  let  in  a  bigger  light ;  that  so,  at 
least,  some  small  glimmering  may  be  left  to  posterity, 
what  difficulties  and  obstructions  their  forefathers  met 
with  in  their  first  settling  these  desert  parts  of  America."* 
The  history  begins  with  an  account  of  the  first  treacher- 
ous assaults  of  the  Pequot  Indians  upon  the  English  "about 
the  year  1632,"  and  of  their  further  acts  of  perfidy  and  vio- 
lence until,  in  the  year  1637,  they  had  drawn  other  Indian 
tribes  into  a  conspiracy  for  the  annihilation  of  the  white  set- 
tlements in  Connecticut.  The  condition  of  the  latter  "did 
look  very  sad,  for  those  Pequots  were  a  great  people,  be- 
ing strongly  fortified,  cruel,  warlike,  munitioned,  and  so 
forth;  and  the  English  but  an  handful  in  comparison."1 
In  May,  1637,  the  English,  knowing  that  the  hour  was 
come,  gathered  two  little  armies,  one  under  Captain  John 
Underbill,  the  other  under  Captain  John  Mason,  and 
pushed  swiftly  into  the  country  of  the  Pequots,  and  by 
night  drew  near  to  the  fort  at  Mystic  in  which  the  most 
of  the  Pequot  warriors  were  gathered.  There  the  white 
men  lay  down,  "much  wearied  with  hard  travel,  keep- 
ing great  silence;  .  .  .  the  rocks  were  our  pillows;  yet 
rest  was  pleasant.  .  .  .  We  appointed  our  guards  and 
placed  our  sentinels  at  some  distance,  who  heard  the 
enemy  singing  at  the  fort,  who  continued  that  strain  until 
midnight,  with  great  insulting  and  rejoicing."4  By  day- 
break, the  Indians  having  sunk  into  a  deep  sleep,  the 


1 "  The  Hut  of  the  Pequot  War,"  128.  *  Ibid.  128. 

•  Ibid.  133,  «  Ibid.  137-138. 


!  5Q  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITER  A  TURE. 

whites  awoke,  crept  up  to  the  fort,  forced  their  way  into 
it,  and  got  the  savages  within  their  grip.  Sword  and 
musket  did  their  work  too  slowly.  "  The  Captain  told 
them  that  we  should  never  kill  them  after  that  man- 
ner; .  .  .  we  must  burn  them;  and  immediately  stepping 
into  the  wigwam  .  .  .  brought  out  a  firebrand,  and  put- 
ting it  into  the  mats  with  which  they  were  covered, 
set  the  wigwams  on  fire.  .  .  .  WThen  it  was  thoroughly 
kindled  the  Indians  ran  as  men  most  dreadfully  amazed. 
And  indeed  such  a  dreadful  terror  did  the  Almighty  let 
fall  upon  their  spirits,  that  they  would  fly  from  us  and 
run  into  the  very  flames.  .  .  .  And  when  the  fort  was 
thoroughly  fired,  command  was  given  that  all  should  fall 
off  and  surround  the  fort.  .  .  .  The  fire  .  .  .  did  swiftly 
overrun  the  fort,  to  the  extreme  amazement  of  the  enemy: 
.  .  .  some  of  them  climbing  to  the  top  of  the  palisado ; 
others  of  them  running  into  the  very  flames ;  many 
of  them,  gathering  to  windward,  lay  pelting  at  us  with 
their  arrows,  and  we  repaid  them  with  our  small  shot. 
Others  of  the  stoutest  issued  forth,  as  we  did  guess,  to 
the  number  of  forty — who  perished  by  the  sword.  .  . 
Thus  were  the  stout-hearted  spoiled,  having  slept  their  last 
sleep  ;  and  none  of  their  men  could  find  their  hands.  Thus 
did  the  Lord  judge  among  the  heathen,  filling  the  place 
with  dead  bodies.  ...  In  little  more  than  one  hour's 
space  was  their  impregnable  fort,  with  themselves,  utterly 
destroyed,  to  the  number  of  six  or  seven  hundred.  .  .  . 
There  were  only  seven  taken  captive,  and  about  seven  es- 
caped."1 

Such  was  the  famous  '  Mystic-fight,'  a  thorough  piece 
of  work,  fought  over  again  and  again  in  talk  around  many 
a  New  England  fire-side  for  a  hundred  years  afterward, 
and  never  forgotten  by  the  red  men  who  were  left  alive 
to  remember  anything.  With  that  fight  the  war  was 
really  over,  even  as  all  was  over  with  the  terrible  tribe  of 

1  "  The  Hist,  of  Ihe  Pequot  War,"  139-141. 


DANIEL   GOOKIN.  !5I 

the  Pequots ,  and  the  book,  after  relating  some  minor  in- 
cidents,  more  or  less  bloody,  rises  at  the  close  into  a 
Davidic  chant  of  exultation  at  the  victory  of  Jehovah  over 
them  that  do  evil,  and  at  the  glorious  deliverance  wrought 
by  him  for  his  people.1 

VII. 

The  reputation  of  Daniel  Gookin  has  fallen  among  us 
far  below  his  deserts.  As  we  study  his  writings,  we  see 
shining  through  them  the  signals  of  a  very  noble  manhood, 
— modesty,  tenderness,  strength,  devoutness,  a  heart  full  of 
sympathy  for  every  kind  of  distress,  a  hand  able  and  quick 
to  reach  out  and  obey  the  promptings  of  his  heart.  Then, 
too,  we  are  impressed  by  his  uncommon  intellectual  value. 
We  find  that  he  had  width  and  grip  in  his  ideas ;  his  mind 
was  trained  to  orderly  movement ;  his  style  rose  clear  and 
free  above  the  turbid  and  pedantic  rhetoric  of  his  age  and 
neighborhood  ;  his  reading  was  shown,  not  in  the  flapping 
tags  of  quotation,  but  in  a  diffused  intelligence,  fullness, 
and  poise  of  thought ;  as  an  historian,  he  had  the  primary 
virtues — truth,  fairness,  lucidity. 

Thus,  as  we  begin  to  get  acquainted  with  the  man  through 
his  writings  and  to  like  him  more  and  more,  we  turn  with 
quite  a  new  zest  to  the  study  of  his  personal  history.  His 
life,  we  find,  was  a  noble  one  from  end  to  end :  not  in  all 
respects  prosperous,  but  rugged  and  sometimes  sorrowful ; 
having  in  fact  the  veiled  prosperities  of  hinderance,  disap- 
pointment, struggle  ;  but  cheerful  always  with  the  firm- 
ness and  brightness  of  high  trust,  manly  pluck,  and  Chris- 

1  Other  contemporaneous  accounts  of  the  Pequot  war  are  :  (a)  "  News 
from  America,"  by  Capt.  John  Underbill,  London,  1638.  reprinted  in  3  Mass. 
Hist.  Soc.  Coll.  VI.  i-a8  ;  (b)  "  Relation  of  the  Pequot  Wars."  by  Lion 
Gardener,  first  printed  in  3  Mass.  Hist.  Soc.  Coll.  III.  131-160;  (c)  "A 
True  Relation  of  the  late  Battle  fought  in  New  England  between  the 
English  and  the  Pequot  Savages,"  by  the  Rev.  Philip  Vincent,  London, 
•637,  reprinted  in  3  Mass.  Hist.  Soc.  Coll.  VI.  29-43.  All  these  have  his- 
torical value,  none  that  is  literary. 


1 52  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

tian  resignation.  Moreover,  he  belonged  to  that  large 
type  of  manhood  that  England  produced  so  many  speci- 
mens of  in  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries,  Eliza- 
bethan  men,  who  settled  the  antique  quarrel  between  the 
life  of  thought  and  the  life  of  action,  by  leading  both 
lives.  Over  against  this  prosaic,  old  name  of  Daniel 
Gookin,  it  is  right  for  us  to  set  the  two  descriptive  words 
that  throw  some  gleam  of  poetry  upon  it — the  words,  au- 
thor, soldier. 

The  date  of  his  birth  can  be  only  approximately  stated; 
it  was  about  1612.  He  probably  came  to  America  with 
his  father  in  1621.  It  is  a  notable  thing  about  him  that 
though  he  had  grown  up  to  manhood  in  the  Cavalier  col- 
ony of  Virginia,  in  theology  and  in  politics  he  was  a  very 
Puritan.  But  in  the  year  1643,  Virginia  had  a  renewed  at- 
tack  of  the  disease  that  was  then  epidemic  throughout  Chris- 
tendom— the  disease  of  religious  intolerance ;  and  under  the 
paroxysms  of  this  disease  Virginia  proceeded  to  expel  from 
her  borders  certain  persons  who  did  not  conform  to  the 
Episcopal  church  as  there  established.  This  seems  to  have 
been  the  cause  of  Gookin's  removal  to  Massachusetts, 
where  he  was  made  a  freeman  of  the  colony  in  May,  1644; 
taking  up  his  residence  subsequently  at  Cambridge,  which 
continued  to  be  his  home  during  the  remainder  of  his  long 
life.  The  aptitude  of  the  man  for  public  service  was  soon 
recognized  ;  for  he  was  thenceforward  in  constant  employ- 
ment in  matters  of  war  and  peace,  of  piety  and  politics; 
he  was  made  captain  of  militia,  member  of  the  house  of 
deputies,  speaker  of  the  house  of  deputies,  one  of  the  gen- 
eral magistrates  of  the  colony,  a  licenser  of  the  printing 
press,  and  at  last  commander-in-chief  of  the  colonial  mili- 
tary forces.  In  1655,  and  again  in  1657,  Gookin  went  to 
England,  and  spent  two  or  three  years  there,  enjoying  the 
acquaintance  and  confidence  of  the  Protector ;  for  it  was 
through  Daniel  Gookin  that  Cromwell  sent  to  the  men  of 
Massachusetts  his  celebrated  proposition,  that  they  should 
abandon  the  rugged  land  in  which  they  had  settled  and 


DANIEL   GOOKIN. 


'S3 


transfer  themselves  to  the  balm  and  bloom  of  Jamaica. 
Of  all  Daniel  Gookin's  public  employments,  the  one  that 
was  most  congenial  to  his  humane  spirit  was  that  of  super- 
intendent of  the  Indians  within  the  jurisdiction  of  Mas- 
sachusetts. This  position  he  held  during  the  last  thirty 
years  of  his  life,  performing  its  duties  with  a  heartiness  and 
fidelity  that  were  more  than  official.  During  all  those 
years  he  and  the  apostle  Eliot  went  hand  in  hand  in  Christ- 
like  labor  and  provident  care  for  the  Indians  ;  and  when  in 
1675  and  1676  the  red  men  of  New  England  under  the  lead 
of  King  Philip  made  their  last  great  concerted  effort  to  ex- 
terminate the  white  men  who  had  taken  possession  of  their 
hunting-fields,  Gookin  and  Eliot  were  among  the  very  few 
persons  who  did  not  give  way  to  insane  terror  and  exas- 
peration. Almost  alone,  these  two  men  stood  up  against 
the  popular  delirium,  and  they  pleaded  even  then  on  be- 
half of  the  execrated  copper-face  the  pleas  of  reason, 
and  Christian  pity,  and  common  justice.  For  this  crime 
Gookin  especially  was  for  a  time  punished  with  the  popu- 
lar hatred.  He  was  hooted  at  in  public  places.  He  said 
from  the  bench  where  he  sat  as  a  magistrate  that  it  was 
dangerous  for  him  to  walk  along  the  streets.  He  was 
denounced  as  a  traitor  to  his  own  kind.  But  it  was  not  in 
Daniel  Gookin,  doing  the  right,  to  bend  before  any  sort  of 
storm  ;  and  at  last  the  storm  passed  by ;  and  he  abode 
still.  Later  in  his  life,  the  same  resolute  obstinacy,  under 
altered  circumstances,  brought  to  him  a  popularity  as  pro- 
digious as  had  been  his  previous  unpopularity ;  for,  when 
that  dogged  political  conflict  with  Randolph  and  Andros 
came  on,  and  the  people  of  New  England  were  in  danger 
of  being  robbed  both  of  property  and  of  freedom  by  those 
rapacious  menials  of  James  the  Second,  once  more  the 
undaunted  courage  and  the  rock-like  firmness  of  Daniel 
Gookin  were  a  power  in  the  land.  He  fought  Randolph 
and  Andros  upon  every  item  of  their  demands.  He  op- 
posed every  concession  to  them.  He  opposed  the  sending 
of  agents  to  England.  He  opposed  any  submission  to  the 


154 


HISTORY  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 


acts  of  trade.  He  stood  for  a  strict  construction  of  the 
colonial  charter.  He  nourished  his  patriotic  jealousy  for 
every  specific  American  right,  political  or  commercial.  He 
was  the  originator  and  the  prophet  of  that  immortal  dog- 
ma of  our  national  greatness — no  taxation  without  repre- 
sentation. Of  course,  in  this  bitter  and  perilous  battle  with 
the  enemies  of  his  own  people,  his  own  people  at  last 
were  with  him ;  and  he  who  ten  years  before  had  been  so 
obnoxious  to  them  that  his  name  was  "  a  by-word  among 
men  and  boys,"1  and  that  jeers  and  threats  pursued  him 
along  the  streets,  in  his  last  years  was  permitted  to  taste 
the  flavor  of  a  public  approbation  that  filled  all  the  air 
about  him  and  thronged  after  his  footsteps  wherever  he 
went.  Finally,  in  honor  of  this  man,  three  things  remain 
to  be  said.  First,  his  piety  was  Puritanic  without  being 
vitriolic.  Second,  he  had  been  in  the  public  service  a  large 
part  of  his  life ;  but  he  died  so  poor  that  his  surviving 
friend,  the  apostle  Eliot,  wrote  to  the  bountiful  and  wise 
Robert  Boyle  in  England,  asking  him  in  charity  to  send 
over  to  the  poor  man's  widow  the  sum  of  ten  pounds. 
Third,  he  was  a  white  man  ;  yet  the  rumor  of  his  death 
carried  sorrow  into  every  red  man's  wigwam  in  Massachu- 
setts. 

The  writings  left  to  us  by  this  grand  old  American  pa- 
triarch and  sage  are  two  treatises,  both  historical,  and  both 
relating  to  the  Indians  of  New  England.  He  had  indeed 
worked  out  an  admirable  plan  for  a  general  history  of 
New  England, — the  most  comprehensive  and  philosophi- 
cal plan,  perhaps,  that  was  projected  by  any  one  before 
the  present  century.  He  was  about  sixty-two  years  old 
when  he  gave  to  the  public  a  description  of  this  plan  ;  and 
in  doing  so  he  used  these  interesting  sentences  of  self- 
reference :  "You  may  here  see  my  design,  which  I  earn- 
estly  desired  might  have  been  drawn  by  a  more  able  pen ; 
and  I  have  often  earnestly  moved  able  persons  to  under- 

1  "  A  Letter  to  London,"  quoted  in  Archaeol.  Am.  II.  449,  note. 


DANIEL   GOO  KIN. 


155 


take  it ;  but  not  knowing  of  any,  and  being  unwilling  that 
a  matter  of  so  great  concernment  for  the  honor  of  God  and 
the  good  of  men,  should  be  buried  in  oblivion,  I  have  ad- 
ventured in  my  old  age,  and  in  a  plain  style,  to  draw  some 
rude  delineaments  of  God's  beautiful  work  in  this  land.  I 
have,  through  grace,  travelled  half  way  in  this  work,  as  is 
said  before ;  but  in  truth  I  find  myself  clogged  with  so 
many  avocations,  as  my  public  employ  among  the  English 
and  Indians,  and  my  own  personal  and  family  exercises, 
which  by  reason  of  my  low  estate  in  the  world  are  the 
more  obstructive  and  perplexing,  so  that  I  cannot  proceed 
in  this  work  so  vigorously  as  I  desire.  Yet  I  shall  en- 
deavor, by  God's  assistance,  if  he  please  to  spare  me  life 
and  ability,  to  make  what  speedy  progress  I  can.  If  this 
tract  concerning  the  Indians  find  acceptance,  I  shall  be 
the  more  encouraged  to  finish  and  send  forth  the  other; 
which  although  it  should  prove  very  imperfect,  by  reason 
of  the  weakness  and  unworthiness  of  the  author,  yet  I 
shall  endeavor  that  it  be  drawn  according  to  truth  ;  and 
then,  if  it  be  of  no  other  use,  it  may  serve  to  inform  my 
children,  or  possibly  contribute  some  little  help  to  a  more 
able  pen,  to  set  forth  the  same  thing,  more  exactly  and 
exquisitely  garnished,  in  after  times."  l 

These  sentences  occur  in  the  postscript  of  his  first  work, 
"  Historical  Collections  of  the  Indians  in  New  England," 
which  he  made  ready  for  publication  in  1674,  and  dedi- 
cated to  Charles  the  Second.  Though  carefully  finished  for 
the  press,  the  work  slumbered  in  manuscript  one  hundred 
and  eighteen  years,  and  first  awoke  to  the  privilege  of  print 
in  1792,  in  the  earliest  volume  of  the  Massachusetts  His- 
torical Society.  It  describes  the  several  Indian  nations  of 
New  England,  their  customs,  their  religious  beliefs,  their 
forms  of  government ;  it  particularly  tells  of  the  Indians 
who  had  accepted  Christianity ;  and  it  gives  affectionate 
sketches  of  such  noble  white  men  as  had  devoted  them- 

'  i  Mass.  Hist.  Soc.  Coll.  I.  226. 


1 56  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

selves  to  the  task  of  helping  the  Indians  to  find  the  way 
to  a  better  life.  The  author  gathered  his  materials  with 
care,  and  arranged  them  with  clearness ;  and  his  book 
abounds  in  calm,  pleasant,  and  judicial  statements  concern- 
ing those  crabbed  and  forlorn  creatures,  earth-men,  anthro- 
poid animals,  whose  fate  it  seemed  to  be  to  wither  and  dis- 
appear before  the  breath  of  the  pale-faces. 

The  second  work  written  by  Daniel  Gookin  was  finished 
in  1677,  and  was  dedicated  to  Robert  Boyle.  It  was  prob- 
ably sent  over  to  England  for  publication ;  and  in  Eng- 
land it  remained  in  manuscript,  and  was  lost,  until  the  pres- 
ent century,  when  it  was  brought  to  the  light  once  more, 
sent  back  to  this  country,  and  in  the  year  1836  printed  for 
the  first  time.1  This  also  relates  to  the  Indians  of  New 
England  ;  and  its  composition  was  prompted  by  certain 
incidents  connected  with  King  Philip's  war,  at  that  time 
but  recently  ended.  That  terrible  war  had  kindled  among 
the  white  inhabitants  of  New  England  a  delirium  of  wrath 
against  the  Indians  which  cast  away  all  pity,  all  justice; 
which  embraced  in  an  awful  doom  of  destruction  the 
Christian  Indian  and  the  pagan,  the  friend  and  the  enemy. 
Against  this  brutal  and  indiscriminate  fury,  Daniel  Gookin 
had  all  along  protested  ;  and  he  wrote  this  book  for  the 
purpose  of  showing  that  the  Indians  who  had  avowed 
themselves  Christians,  had  taken  no  part  in  the  conspiracy 
that  their  pagan  kindred  had  formed  for  the  extermina- 
tion of  the  English.  It  was  entitled  "  An  Historical  Ac- 
count of  the  Doings  and  Sufferings  of  the  Christian  In- 
dians in  New  England."  It  is  written  with  tranquillity  of 
tone,  without  bitterness  even  toward  his  own  bitter  assail- 
ants ;  and  its  calm  and  massive  accumulation  of  facts  rises 
to  an  irresistible  and  even  pathetic  vindication  of  the  Chris- 
tian Indians  from  the  monstrous  charges  that  had  been 
cast  against  them.  It  shows  that  months  before  the  war 
actually  burst  upon  the  white  settlements,  these  true- 

1  By  Am.  Antiqu.  Soc.  in  Archaeol.  Am.  II.  423-534- 


DANIEL   GOOKIN. 


'57 


hearted  Indian  disciples  gave  repeated  warning  of  the 
coming  danger ;  that  when  at  last  the  war  came  on,  they 
offered  their  services  as  soldiers,  servants,  scouts,  and  spies ; 
that  down  to  the  very  close  of  the  war,  they  rendered  in- 
valuable aid  to  the  English  in  many  ways ;  and  yet,  that 
from  the  beginning  to  the  end,  they  and  their  harmless 
families  were  treated  by  their  white  patrons  with  unmeas- 
ured contempt  and  distrust;  that  they  were  insulted  every- 
where, were  denied  the  ordinary  comforts  of  life,  and  that 
some  of  them  were  murdered  atrociously  in  cold  blood, 
even  by  white  women ;  but  that  in  spite  of  all  these  cruel- 
ties, they  remained  faithful  to  the  English,  and  bore  their 
hardships  with  a  meekness  and  a  fortitude  which  implied 
that  these  swarthy  religious  disciples  of  the  white  men  had 
already  got  far  beyond  their  teachers  in  the  scholarship  of 
the  Christian  graces.  "  I  had  need  apologize,"  says  the 
author,  "  for  this  long  story  concerning  the  Indians.  But 
the  true  reason  of  being  so  particular  is  that  I  might,  in 
the  words  of  truth  and  soberness,  clear  the  innocency  of 
those  Indians,  unto  all  pious  and  impartial  men  that  shall 
peruse  this  script ;  and  so  far  as  in  me  lies,  to  vindicate 
the  hand  of  God  and  religion  that  these  Christians  profess 
and  practise ;  and  to  declare  I  cannot  join  with  the  multi- 
tude that  would  cast  them  all  into  the  same  lump  with 
the  profane  and  brutish  heathen,  who  are  as  great  enemies 
to  our  Christian  Indians  as  they  are  to  the  English."1 

In  spite  of  old  age,  poverty,  and  public  cares,  Daniel 
Gookin  completed  his  large  scheme  of  a  "  History  of 
New  England ; "  but  the  manuscript,  which  at  his  death 
was  left  to  a  son,  is  supposed  to  have  been  burned  some 
years  afterward  in  the  house  of  that  son,  in  Sherburne, 
Massachusetts.  This  was  probably  the  only  existing  copy 
of  the  work.  The  loss  of  it  is  a  calamity  to  early  Ameri- 
can history. 

»  ArducoL  Am.  II.  461-462. 


CHAPTER  VII. 

NEW  ENGLAND:   DESCRIPTIONS   OF  NATURE  AND   PEOPLE 
IN   AMERICA. 

I. — Sensitiveness  of  the  first  Americans  to  the  peculiar  phenomena  of  the 
new  world. 

II. — "Journal"  of  Bradford  and  Winslow — First  contact  of  the  Pilgrims 
with  America — Gropings — American  thunder — Indian  visits — An  Indian 
king  at  home — Winslow's  letter — His  "Good  News  from  New  England" 
— History  as  cultivated  by  the  Indians — Men  who  are  not  called  to  be 
colonists. 

III. — Francis  Higginson,  churchman,  dissenter,  immigrant — His  "True 
Relation" — His  "  New  England's  Plantation  " — Pictures  of  sea  and  land 
— The  bright  side  of  things  in  America. 

IV. — William  Wood — His  "New  England's  Prospect" — His  uncommon 
literary  ability — Analysis  of  his  book — His  defence  of  the  honesty  of 
travellers — His  powers  of  description — Merit  of  his  verses — Mirthfulness — 
Wolves,  humming-birds,  fishes — Eloquent  and  playful  sketches  of  Indians. 

V. — John  Josselyn — His  kindred — No  lover  of  the  New  England  Puritans—- 
His habits  in  America — A  seventeenth  century  naturalist  in  our  woods — 
His  "  New  England's  Rarities  Discovered  " — His  "Two  Voyages  to  New 
England" — The  White  Hills — His  true  value  as  a  reporter  of  natural 
history — Generous  gifts  to  the  credulous  reader — His  friendly  attitude 
toward  the  unknown. 

I. 

A  DELIGHTFUL  group  of  writings  belonging  to  our  ear- 
liest age  is  made  up  of  those  which  preserve  for  us,  in  the 
very  words  of  the  men  themselves,  the  curiosity,  the  awe, 
the  bewilderment,  the  fresh  delight,  with  which  the  Ameru 
can  Fathers  came  face  to  face  for  the  first  time  with  the 
various  forms  of  nature  and  of  life  in  the  new  world. 
We  have  already  seen  examples  of  this  class  of  writings 
produced  by  the  early  men  of  Virginia ;  and  amon^r  the 
founders  of  New  England  there  was  no  lack  of  the  same 

158 


BRADFORD  AND    WIN  SLOW.  !j9 

sensitiveness  to  the  vast,  picturesque,  and  novel  aspects  of 
nature  which  they  encountered  upon  the  sea  and  the  land, 
in  their  first  journeys  hither.  The  evidence  of  this  fact  is 
scattered  thick  through  all  their  writings,  in  letters,  ser- 
mons, histories,  poems ;  while  there  remain  several  books, 
written  by  them  immediately  after  their  arrival  here,  de- 
scribing in  the  first  glow  of  elated  feeling  the  vision  that 
unfolded  itself  before  them,  of  the  new  realms  of  existence, 
the  "  vast  and  empty  chaos,"  *  upon  which  they  were  enter- 
ing. 

II. 

The  first  of  these  books  consists  of  a  journal*  kept  by 
two  renowned  passengers  upon  the  Mayflower,  William 
Bradford  and  Edward  Winslow,  from  the  ninth  of  Novem- 
ber, 1620,  the  day  on  which  they  caught  their  first  glimpse 
of  American  land,  until  the  return  to  England  of  the  good 
ship  Fortune,  more  than  thirteen  months  afterward.  Of 
course,  in  a  book  of  this  kind,  made  up  of  extemporized  jot- 
tings, we  ought  not  to  look  for  careful  literary  workman- 
ship ;  and  yet,  the  deliberation  and  the  conscientiousness 
of  the  Pilgrim  character  are  stamped  upon  every  line  of  it. 
It  has  the  charm  of  utter  sincerity,  the  effortless  grace 
that  we  might  expect  in  the  language  of  noble-minded 
men  casting  their  eyes  for  the  first  time,  and  with  unhack- 
neyed enthusiasm,  upon  the  face  of  a  new  universe. 

"  After  many  difficulties  in  boisterous  storms,  at  length, 
by  God's  providence  ...  we  espied  land.  .  .  .  And  the 
appearance  of  it  much  comforted  us,  especially  seeing  so 
goodly  a  land,  and  wooded  to  the  brink  of  the  sea."' 
Coming  round  "  the  spiral  bending "  of  the  outermost 
point  of  Cape  Cod,  they  found  themselves  suddenly  in  "  a 

1  Robert  Cushman,  in  Young,  "Chron.  Pil."  245. 

1  Long  known  under  the  ugly  name  of  "  Mourt's  Relation,"  so  called 
probably  through  a  typographical  error  in  the  first  edition.  Reprinted  ia 
Young,  "Chron.  Pil."  109-229. 

'  Young,  "  Chron.  Pil."  117. 


l6o  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

good  harbor  and  pleasant  bay/'  "  wherein  a  thousand  sail 
of  ships  may  safely  ride."1  Upon  land  "there  was  the 
greatest  store  of  fowl  that  ever  we  saw.  And  every  day 
we  saw  whales  playing  hard  by  us,  of  which  in  that  place, 
if  we  had  instruments  and  means  to  take  them,  we  might 
have  made  a  very  rich  return  ;  which  to  our  great  grief 
we  wanted."2  Some  of  the  pioneers  going  on  shore  for 
the  purpose  of  discovering  a  place  of  habitation,  they  won- 
dered at  the  density  of  the  forests,  and  at  the  scarcity 
of  the  inhabitants.  "  We  marched  through  boughs  and 
bushes,  and  under  hills  and  valleys,  which  tore  our  very 
armor  in  pieces,  and  yet  could  meet  with  none  "  of  the  in- 
habitants "  nor  their  houses,  nor  find  any  fresh  water."  At 
last,  "  about  ten  o'clock  we  came  into  a  deep  valley,  full 
of  brush,  wood-gaile,  and  long  grass,  through  which  we 
found  little  paths  or  tracks  ;  and  there  we  saw  deer,  and 
found  springs  of  fresh  water,  of  which  we  were  heartily 
glad,  and  sat  us  down  and  drunk  our  first  New  England 
water,  with  as  much  delight  as  ever  we  drunk  drink  in  all 
our  lives."3  "  We  went  ranging  up  and  down  till  the  sun 
began  to  draw  low,  and  then  we  hasted  out  of  the  woods, 
that  we  might  come  to  our  shallop,  which  ...  we  espied 
a  great  way  off,  and  called  them  to  come  unto  us.  ... 
They  were  exceeding  glad  to  see  us.  ...  So  being  both 
weary  and  faint,  for  we  had  eaten  nothing  all  that  day,  we 
fell  to  make  our  rendezvous  and  get  firewood.  .  .  .  By 
that  time  we  had  done,  and  our  shallop  come  to  us,  it  was 
within  night  ;  and  we  fed  upon  such  victuals  as  we  had, 
and  betook  us  to  our  rest,  after  we  had  set  our  watch. 
About  midnight  we  heard  a  great  and  hideous  cry ;  and  our 
sentinels  called  '  Arm  !  Arm  ! '  So  we  bestirred  ourselves, 
and  shot  off  a  couple  of  muskets,  and  the  noise  ceased. 
We  concluded  that  it  was  a  company  of  wolves  or  foxes; 
for  one  told  us  he  had  heard  such  a  noise  in  Newfoundland. 
About  five  o'clock  in  the  morning  we  began  to  be  stir- 

'Young,  "Chron.  Pit."  118.  »  Ibid.  119.  »  Ibid.  128-129. 


BRADFORD  AND   WINSLOW.  l6l 

ring.  .  .  .  After  prayer  we  prepared  ourselves  for  break- 
fast and  for  a  journey ;  and  it  being  now  the  twilight  in  the 
morning,  it  was  thought  meet  to  carry  the  things  down  to 
the  shallop.  ...  As  it  fell  out,  the  water  not  being  high 
enough,  they  laid  the  things  down  upon  the  shore  and 
came  up  to  breakfast.  Anon,  all  upon  a  sudden,  we  heard 
a  great  and  a  strange  cry,  which  we  knew  to  be  the  same 
voices,  though  they  varied  their  notes.  One  of  our  com- 
pany, being  abroad,  came  running  in,  and  cried,  '  They  are 
men!  Indians!  Indians!'  and  withal  their  arrows  came 
flying  amongst  us.  Our  men  ran  out  with  all  speed  to 
recover  their  arms.  ...  In  the  meantime,  Captain  Miles 
Standish,  having  asnaphance  ready,  made  a  shot,  and  after 
him  another.  After  they  two  had  shot,  other  two  of  us 
were  ready ;  but  he  wished  us  not  to  shoot  till  we  could 
take  aim,  for  we  knew  not  what  need  we  should  have.  .  .  . 
Our  care  was  no  less  for  the  shallop.  .  .  .  We  called  unto 
them  to  know  how  it  was  with  them ;  and  they  answered 
*  Well !  Well ! '  every  one,  and  '  be  of  good  courage ! '  .  .  . 
The  cry  of  our  enemies  was  dreadful.  .  .  .  Their  note  was 
after  this  manner,  '  Woach,  woach,  ha  ha  hach  woach'  .  .  . 
There  was  a  lusty  man,  and  no  whit  less  valiant,  who  was 
thought  to  be  their  captain,  stood  behind  a  tree  within  half 
a  musket-shot  of  us,  and  there  let  his  arrows  fly  at  us.  He 
was  seen  to  shoot  three  arrows,  which  were  all  avoided  ;  for 
he  at  whom  the  first  arrow  was  aimed,  saw  it,  and  stooped 
down,  and  it  flew  over  him.  The  rest  were  avoided  also. 
He  stood  three  shots  of  a  musket.  At  length,  one  took, 
as  he  said,  full  aim  at  him  ;  after  which  he  gave  an  extra- 
ordinary cry,  and  away  they  went  all.  We  followed  them 
about  a  quarter  of  a  mile.  .  .  .  Then  we  shouted  all  to- 
gether two  several  times,  and  shot  off  a  couple  of  muskets 
and  so  returned.  This  we  did  that  they  might  see  we 
were  not  afraid  of  them,  nor  discouraged.  Thus  it  pleased 
God  to  vanquish  our  enemies  and  give  us  deliverance." l 

1  Young,  "  Chron.  Pil."  154-158. 
XI 


l$2  HIS  TOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITER  A  TURE. 

On  Saturday,  the  third  of  March,  "  the  birds  sang  in  the 
woods  most  pleasantly.  At  one  of  the  clock  it  thundered, 
which  was  the  first  we  heard  in  that  country.  It  was 
strong  and  great  claps,  but  short;  but  after  an  hour  it 
rained  very  sadly  till  midnight."1 

On  Friday,  the  sixteenth  of  March,  "  we  determined 
to  conclude  of  the  military  orders,  which  we  had  begun 
to  consider  of  before.  .  .  .  And  whilst  we  were  busied 
hereabout,  we  were  interrupted  again ;  for  there  presented 
himself  a  savage,  which  caused  an  alarm.  He  very  boldly 
came  all  alone,  and  along  the  houses,  straight  to  the  ren- 
dezvous ;  where  we  intercepted  him,  not  suffering  him 
to  go  in.  ...  He  saluted  us  in  English  and  bade  us 
'welcome.'  .  .  .  He  was  a  man  free  in  speech,  so  far  as 
he  could  express  his  mind,  and  of  a  seemly  carriage.  We 
questioned  him  of  many  things ;  he  was  the  first  savage 
we  could  meet  withal.  He  said  he  was  not  of  these  parts, 
but  of  Morattiggon,  and  one  of  the  sagamores  or  lords 
thereof.  .  .  .  He  discoursed  of  the  whole  country,  and  of 
every  province,  and  of  their  sagamores,  and  their  num- 
ber of  men,  and  strength.  The  wind  beginning  to  rise  a 
little,  we  cast  a  horseman's  coat  about  him  ;  for  he  was 
stark  naked,  only  a  leather  about  his  waist,  with  a  fringe 
about  a  span  long  or  little  more.  He  had  a  bow  and  two 
arrows.  .  .  .  He  was  a  tall,  straight  man,  the  hair  of  his 
head  black,  long  behind,  only  short  before,  none  on  his 
face  at  all.  He  asked  some  beer,  but  we  gave  him  strong 
water,  and  biscuit,  and  butter,  and  cheese,  and  pudding, 
and  a  piece  of  mallard ;  all  which  he  liked  well.  .  .  .  All 
the  afternoon  we  spent  in  communication  with  him.  We 
would  gladly  have  been  rid  of  him  at  night,  but  he  was  not 
willing  to  go  this  night.  .  .  .  We  lodged  him  that  night 
at  Stephen  Hopkins's  house,  and  watched  him."2 

On  the  twenty-second  of  March,  the  Pilgrims  received  a 
visit  from  the  great  sagamore,  Massasoit.  "  After  saluta- 

1  Young,  "Chron.  Pil."  181-182.  a  Ibid.  182-185. 


EDWARD  WIN  SLOW.  ^3 

tions,  our  governor  kissing  his  hand,  the  king  kissed  him  ; 
and  so  they  sat  down.  The  governor  called  for  some 
strong  water,  and  drunk  to  him ;  and  he  drunk  a  great 
draught,  that  made  him  sweat  all  the  while  after.  .  .  .  All 
the  while  he  sat  by  the  governor,  he  trembled  for  fear.  In 
his  person  he  is  a  very  lusty  man,  in  his  best  years,  an 
able  body,  grave  of  countenance,  and  spare  of  speech  ;  in 
his  attire  little  or  nothing  differing  from  the  rest  of  his 
followers,  only  in  a  great  chain  of  white  bone  beads  about 
his  neck.  .  .  .  The  king  had  in  his  bosom,  hanging  in  a 
string,  a  great  long  knife.  He  marvelled  much  at  our 
trumpet,  and  some  of  his  men  would  sound  it  as  well  as 
they  could.  Samoset  and  Squanto,  they  staid  all  night 
with  us ;  and  the  king  and  all  his  men  lay  all  night  in  the 
woods,  not  above  half  an  English  mile  from  us,  and  all 
their  wives  and  women  with  them.  That  night  we  kept 
good  watch  ;  but  there  was  no  appearance  of  danger.1 

"  For  the  temper  of  the  air  here,"  writes  Edward  Wins- 
low,  in  a  letter  appended  to  the  journal  from  which  we 
have  been  quoting,  "  it  agreeth  well  with  that  in  England ; 
and  if  there  be  any  difference  at  all,  this  is  somewhat  hot- 
ter in  summer.  Some  think  it  to  be  colder  in  winter  ;  but 
I  cannot  out  of  experience  so  say.  The  air  is  very  clear, 
and  not  foggy,  as  hath  been  reported.  I  never  in  my  life 
remember  a  more  seasonable  year  than  we  have  here  en- 
joyed ;  and  if  we  have  once  but  kine,  horses,  and  sheep,  I 
make  no  question  bat  men  might  live  as  contented  here  as 
in  any  part  of  the  world.  .  .  .  The  country  wanteth  only 
industrious  men  to  employ;  for  it  would  grieve  your  hearts 
if,  as  I,  you  had  seen  so  many  miles  together  by  goodly 
rivers  uninhabited  ;  and  withal,  to  consider  those  parts  of 
the  world  wherein  you  live  to  be  even  greatly  burthened 
with  abundance  of  people."2 

Thus,  with  words  of  happy  import,  do  these  earliest 
Americans  close  up  the  story  of  their  first  year  in  their 

1  Young,  "  Chron.  Pil."  193-19$.  *  Ibid.  233-234. 


164  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

new  home;  and  three  years  afterward,  in  1624,  Edward 
Winslow  had  a  second  report  to  make,  which  was  pub- 
lished in  London  under  the  title  of  "  Good  News  from 
New  England." l 

He  takes  up  the  narrative  at  the  very  point  where  the 
previous  report  had  dropped  it,  and  carries  it  forward 
in  luminous  and  spirited  style  down  to  September,  1623. 
It  is  a  story  of  the  griefs  and  perils  and  escapes  of  the 
young  settlement,  of  their  various  encounters,  in  amity 
and  in  enmity,  with  mean  red  men  and  meaner  white  ones; 
of  the  interior  administration  of  the  little  commonwealth, 
and  of  its  steady  advancement  through  all  obstructions 
into  solid  security ;  above  all  else,  it  is  a  description  of  the 
country,  with  reference  to  its  desirableness  as  the  seat  of 
a  new  English  community.  Winslow  was  a  brave  man, 
most  expert  in  dealing  with  the  Indians,  and  was  several 
times  sent  upon  embassies  to  them  ;  and  his  book  abounds 
in  vivid  and  amusing  descriptions  of  these  savages,  and  of 
the  manner  of  their  lives.  In  one  place,  for  example,  he 
gives  this  account  of  their  mode  of  preserving  the  memory 
of  historical  events :  "  Instead  of  records  and  chronicles, 
they  take  this  course.  Where  any  remarkable  act  is  done, 
in  memory  of  it,  either  in  the  place  or  by  some  pathway 
near  adjoining,  they  make  a  round  hole  in  the  ground, 
about  a  foot  deep,  and  as  much  over ;  which  when  others 
passing  by  behold,  they  inquire  the  cause  and  occasion  of 
the  same,  which  being  once  known,  they  are  careful  to  ac- 
quaint all  men,  as  occasion  serveth,  therewith  ;  and  lest 
such  holes  should  be  filled  or  grown  up  by  any  accident, 
as  men  pass  by,  they  will  oft  renew  the  same ;  by  which 
means  many  things  of  great  antiquity  are  fresh  in  memory. 
So  that  as  a  man  travelleth,  if  he  can  understand  his  guide, 
his  journey  will  be  the  less  tedious,  by  reason  of  the  many 
historical  discourses  [which]  will  be  related  unto  him."' 
Perhaps  nothing  in  all  the  book  is  more  graphic  or  enter- 

1  Printed  in  Young,  "  Chron.  Pil."  270-375.  *  Ibid.  367. 


EDWARD  WIN  SLOW.  jgj 

taining  than  his  description  of  a  journey  which  in  the 
company  of  "one  Master  John  Hamden,  a  gentleman  of 
London,  who  then  wintered  with  us,"  he  made  for  the 
medical  relief  of  Massasoit.1 

The  conclusion  of  the  work  is  a  racy  and  vigorous  ad- 
monition addressed  to  Englishmen  who  might  meditate 
emigration  to  America,  and  warning  them  against  the  dan- 
ger of  entering  upon  that  grim  business  without  sufficient 
consideration  of  its  inevitable  tasks  and  pains :  "  I  write 
not  these  things  to  dissuade  any  that  shall  seriously,  upon 
due  examination,  set  themselves  to  further  the  glory  of  God 
and  the  honor  of  our  country,  in  so  worthy  an  enterprise, 
but  rather  to  discourage  such  as  with  too  great  lightness 
undertake  such  courses;  who  peradventure  strain  them- 
selves and  their  friends  for  their  passage  thither,  and  are 
no  sooner  there,  than  seeing  their  foolish  imagination 
made  void,  are  at  their  wit's  end,  and  would  give  ten  times 
so  much  for  their  return,  if  they  could  procure  it;  and  out 
of  such  discontented  passions  and  humors,  spare  not  to 
lay  that  imputation  upon  the  country,  and  others,  which 
themselves  deserve.  As,  for  example,  I  have  heard  some 
complain  of  others  for  their  large  reports  of  New  England, 
and  yet,  because  they  must  drink  water  and  want  many 
delicates  they  here  enjoyed,  could  presently  return  with 
their  mouths  full  of  clamors.  And  can  any  be  so  simple 
as  to  conceive  that  the  fountains  should  stream  forth  wine 
or  beer,  or  the  woods  and  rivers  be  like  butchers'  shops  or 
fishmongers'  stalls,  where  they  might  have  things  taken  to 
their  hands?  If  thou  canst  not  live  without  such  things, 
and  hast  no  means  to  procure  the  one,  and  will  not  take 
pains  for  the  other,  nor  hast  ability  to  employ  others  for 
thee,  rest  where  thou  art ;  for,  as  a  proud  heart,  a  dainty 
tooth,  a  beggar's  purse,  and  an  idle  hand,  be  here2  intoler- 


1  Young.  "Chron.  Pil."  313-323. 

1  In  England,  where  the  concluding  paragraphs  of  the  book  appear  to  hare 
been  written. 


!66  HISTORY  OF  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

able,  so  that  person  that  hath  these  qualities  there,  is  much 
more  abominable.  If,  therefore,  God  hath  given  thee  a 
heart  to  undertake  such  courses,  upon  such  grounds  as  bear 
thee  out  in  all  difficulties,  namely,  his  glory  as  a  principal, 
and  all  other  outward  good  things  but  as  accessories,  .  .  . 
then  thou  wilt  with  true  comfort  and  thankfulness  receive 
the  least  of  his  mercies ;  whereas  on  the  contrary,  men  de- 
prive themselves  of  much  happiness,  being  senseless  of 
greater  blessings,  and  through  prejudice  smother  up  the 
love  and  bounty  of  God  ;  whose  name  be  ever  glorified  in 
us,  and  by  us,  now  and  evermore.  Amen." 1 


III. 

Among  the  Argonauts  of  the  first  decade  of  New  Eng- 
land colonization  there  was  perhaps  no  braver  or  more  ex- 
quisite spirit  than  Francis  Higginson,  a  graduate  of  St. 
John's  College,  Cambridge,  who,  entering  the  ministry  of 
the  Church  of  England,  soon  became  noted  for  his  elo- 
quence, and  who,  turning  away  from  very  brilliant  pros- 
pects of  promotion,  became  a  resolute  non-conformist,  and 
finally  accepted  the  office  of  religious  teacher  to  the  little 
pioneer  community  of  Salem,  in  Massachusetts.  It  was  in 
April,  1629,  that  this  saintly  and  gifted  man,  with  his  wife 
and  eight  little  children,  sailed  away  from  England,  on  the 
Talbot,  "  a  good  and  strong  ship,"  carrying  "  above  a  hun- 
dred planters,  six  goats,  five  great  pieces  of  ordnance,  with 
meal,  oatmeal,  pease,  and  all  manner  of  munition  and  pro- 
vision for  the  plantation  for  a  twelvemonth."  * 

Of  this  journey  over  the  Atlantic,  then  a  thing  of  great 
novelty  and  risk,  Francis  Higginson  kept  a  journal,  which 
he  promptly  sent  back  to  England,  and  which  was  circu- 
lated in  manuscript  under  the  title  of  "  A  True  Relation 
of  the  last  Voyage  to  New  England,  declaring  all  circum- 

1  Young,  "  Chron.  Pil."  373-374. 

1  F.  Higginson's  "Journal,"  in  Young,  "Chron    Mass.  Bay,"  213-238. 


FRANCIS  HIGGINSON.  ^7 

stances,  with  the  manner  of  the  passage  we  had  by  sea, 
and  what  manner  of  country  and  inhabitants  we  found 
when  we  came  to  land,  and  what  is  the  present  state  and 
condition  of  the  English  people  that  are  there  already; 
faithfully  recorded,  according  to  the  very  truth,  lor  the 
satisfaction  of  very  many  of  my  loving  friends,  who  have 
earnestly  requested  to  be  truly  certified  in  these  things." 
Arriving  at  Salem  on  the  twenty-ninth  of  June,  the  author 
passed  the  next  three  months  in  getting  established  in  his 
new  home,  and  in  making  himself  acquainted  with  the 
youthful-seeming  world  he  had  come  to  live  in.  The  results 
of  his  observations  were  compressed  into  a  little  book, 
entitled  "  New  England's  Plantation,"  giving  a  "  descrip- 
tion of  the  commodities  and  discommodities  of  that  coun- 
try." This  work  was  instantly  printed  in  London  ;  and  so 
eager  was  the  thirst  of  the  English  people  for  information 
concerning  their  recent  settlements  in  New  England,  that 
three  editions  of  the  book  were  called  for  within  a  single 
year.  In  a  little  more  than  thirteen  months  from  his  arrival 
in  America,  however,  Francis  Higginson  died,  in  the  prime 
of  his  life,  and  on  the  threshold  of  a  great  career. 

Upon  the  title-page  of  his  first  book  there  is  the  hint 
of  an  apology  to  any  "  curious  critic  "  who  may  look  into 
it  "  for  exactness  of  phrases;"  and  yet,  unlabored  as  is 
the  composition  of  both  his  books,  we  find  in  them  a  deli- 
cate felicity  of  expression,  and  a  quiet,  imaginative  pic- 
turesqueness.  Thus,  for  Wednesday,  May  thirteenth,  he 
writes  :  "The  wind  still  holding  easterly,  we  came  as  far  as 
the  Land's  End,  in  the  utmost  part  of  Cornwall,  and  so  left 
our  dear  native  soil  of  England  behind  us ;  and  sailing 
about  ten  leagues  further,  we  passed  the  isles  of  Scilly,  and 
launched  the  same  day  a  great  way  into  the  main  ocean. 
And  now  my  wife  and  other  passengers  began  to  feel  the 
tossing  waves  of  the  western  sea." l 

Again,  under  the  date  of  May  twenty-seventh,  he  gives 

1  Young,  "Chron.  Mass.  Bay,"  221. 


!68  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITER  A  TURE. 

this  forcible  description  of  a  storm  :  "  About  noon  there 
arose  a  south  wind  which  increased  more  and  more,  so 
that  it  seemed  to  us  that  are  landmen,  a  sore  and  terrible 
storm  ;  for  the  wind  blew  mightily,  the  rain  fell  vehemently, 
the  sea  roared,  and  the  waves  tossed  us  horribly  ;  besides, 
it  was  fearful  dark,  and  the  mariner's  mate  was  afraid,  and 
noise  on  the  other  side,  with  their  running  here  and  there, 
loud  crying  one  to  another  to  pull  at  this  and  that  rope. 
The  waves  poured  themselves  over  the  ship,  that  the 
two  boats  were  filled  with  water.  .  .  .  But  this  lasted 
not  many  hours,  after  which  it  became  a  calmish  day."  l 
What  pathos  and  simple  beauty  are  in  these  words,  which 
were  written  for  Wednesday,  the  twenty-fourth  of  June: 
"  This  day  we  had  all  a  clear  and  comfortable  sight  of 
America."2 

Two  days  afterward  the  author  wrote  the  following  sen- 
tences, so  vivid  and  real  in  their  descriptiveness,  that  they 
enable  us  to  enjoy  the  very  luxury  of  drawing  near  to 
America  and  of  beholding  it  with  the  eyes  of  the  Fathers 
themselves  :  "  Friday  a  foggy  morning,  but  after  clear, 
and  wind  calm.  We  saw  many  schools  of  mackerel,  in- 
finite multitudes  on  every  side  of  our  ship.  The  sea  was 
abundantly  stored  with  rockweed  and  yellow  flowers,  like 
gillyflowers.  By  noon  we  were  within  three  leagues  of 
Cape  Ann  ;  and  as  we  sailed  along  the  coasts,  we  saw  every 
hill  and  dale  and  every  island  full  of  gay  woods  and  high 
trees.  The  nearer  we  came  to  the  shore,  the  more  flowers  in 
abundance,  sometimes  scattered  abroad,  sometimes  joined 
in  sheets  nine  or  ten  yards  long,  which  we  supposed  to  be 
brought  from  the  low  meadows  by  the  tide.  Now,  what 
with  fine  woods  and  green  trees  by  land,  and  these  yellow 
flowers  painting  the  sea,  made  us  all  desirous  to  see  our 
new  paradise  of  New  England,  whence  we  saw  such  fore- 
running signals  of  fertility  afar  off."8  On  Monday,  the 


Young,  "Chron.  Mass.  Bay,"  225.  *  Ibid   231. 

8  Ibid.  232-233. 


FRANCIS  HIGGINSON.  169 

twenty-ninth  of  June,  "  as  we  passed  along,  it  was  wonder- 
ful to  behold  so  many  islands,  replenished  with  thick  wood 
and  high  trees,  and  many  fair,  green,  pastures.  .  .  .  We 
rested  that  night  with  glad  and  thankful  hearts  that  God 
had  put  an  end  to  our  long  and  tedious  journey  through  the 
greatest  sea  in  the  world.  .  .  .  Our  passage  was  both  pleas- 
urable and  profitable.  For  we  received  instruction  and  de- 
light in  beholding  the  wonders  of  the  Lord  in  the  deep 
waters,  and  sometimes  seeing  the  sea  round  us  appearing 
with  a  terrible  countenance,  and,  as  it  were,  full  of  high 
hills  and  deep  valleys ;  and  sometimes  it  appeared  as  a 
most  plain  and  even  meadow.  And,  ever  and  anon,  we 
saw  divers  kinds  of  fishes  sporting  in  the  great  waters, 
great  grampuses  and  huge  whales,  going  by  companies, 
and  puffing  up  water-streams.  Those  that  love  their  own 
chimney-corner,  and  dare  not  go  beyond  their  own  town's 
end,  shall  never  have  the  honor  to  see  these  wonderful 
works  of  Almighty  God."1 

In  describing  New  England  with  reference  to  its  fitness 
as  the  seat  of  an  English  commonwealth,  the  author  ar- 
ranges his  facts,  rather  quaintly,  under  the  topics  of  "  the 
four  elements — earth,  water,  air,  and  fire."  All  his  pages 
are  full  of  sunshine,  and  the  fragrance  of  flowers,  and  the 
gladness  of  nature  in  New  England  during  the  balmy  sea- 
son in  which  he  came  to  it.  Indeed,  he  was  accused  by 
some  who  came  afterward,  of  having  given  too  attractive  a 
picture  of  the  country ;  but  for  this  he  was  hardly  to  blame. 
When  he  wrote,  he  had  seen  only  the  season  of  roses :  no 
wonder  that  his  descriptions  were  rosy.  After  a  voyage 
of  six  weeks  upon  the  ocean,  any  land  seems  good,  much 
more  a  delicious,  flowery  summer-land;  and  Francis  Hig- 
ginson  wrote  in  the  first  flush  of  excitement  at  being  on 
shore,  in  a  bounteous  realm,  in  an  exhilarating  new  life. 
It  seems  to  him  a  paradise  regained.  All  things  are  de- 
lightful. He  even  exults  in  the  domestic  felicity  of  having 

1  Yoong,  "  Chron.  Mass.  B»y,"  234-«37. 


1 70  HIS  TOR  Y  OF  A  M ERIC  A  N  LITER  A  TURE. 

"already  a  quart  of  milk  for  a  penny,"1  and  in  having 
candles  of  "  the  wood  of  the  pine  tree  cloven  in  two  little 
slices  something  thin,  which  .  .  .  burn  as  clear  as  a  torch."  * 
Concerning  the  climate  of  the  country,  he  declared  that 
"  a  sup  of  New  England's  air  is  better  than  a  whole  draught 
of  Old  England's  ale."3  He  was  not  long  in  making  a 
study  of  the  Indians,  whom  in  one  passage  he  describes 
with  great  zest,  even  weaving  into  his  account  a  stroke  of 
gentle  raillery  at  a  certain  English  fashion  then  prevalent, 
and  very  distasteful  to  the  Puritans.  The  Indians  "are  a 
tall  and  strong-limbed  people.  Their  colors  are  tawny. 
.  .  .  Their  hair  is  generally  black,  and  cut  before,  like  our 
gentlewomen,  and  one  lock  longer  than  the  rest,  much 
like  to  our  gentlemen,  which  fashion,  I  think,  came  from 
hence  into  England."4  But  best  of  all,  "  we  have  here 
plenty  of  preaching,  and  diligent  catechising,  with  strict 
and  careful  exercise.  .  .  .  And  thus  we  doubt  not  but 
God  will  be  with  us ;  and  if  God  be  with  us,  who  can  be 
against  us  ?  "  5 

IV. 

A  very  sprightly  and  masterful  specimen  of  descriptive 
literature,  embodying  the  results  of  precise  observation 
directed  toward  the  topography,  climate,  and  productions 
of  the  country,  is  "  New  England's  Prospect,"6  published 
in  London  in  1634,  and  written  by  William  Wood,  whose 
residence  in  America  is  supposed  to  have  begun  five  years 

1  Young,  "Chron.  Mass.  Bay,"    245.  8  Ibid.  254. 

3  Ibid.  252.  «  Ibid.  256-257. 

*  Ibid.  259.     Some  of  the  pleasantest  portions  of  these  writings  of  Francis 
Higginson  have   lately  been   made   more  accessible  by  their  publication  in 
Thomas  Wentworth  Higginson's  "  Book  of  American  Explorers."  341-355. 
An  early  brochure,  which  has  acquired  considerable  note   in   our  time,   is 
"Good  News  from    New   England,"   London,    1648,   reprinted   in  4  Mass. 
Hist.  Soc.  Coll.  I.  195-218  ;  a  work  of  no  little  vigor,  also  of  considerable 
antiquarian  value,  but  in  literary  form  inexpressibly  crude.     No  clue  to  the 
authorship  of  it  has  yet  been  discovered. 

*  Reprinted  by  the  Prince  Society,  Boston,  1865. 


WILLIAM  WOOD.  I7! 

before  that  date.  It  will  not  be  easy  for  us  to  give  a  more 
felicitous  account  of  the  book  than  it  gives  of  itself,  when, 
upon  its  old  title-page,  it  assures  us  that  it  is  indeed  "  a 
true,  lively,  and  experimental  description  "  of  the  region 
that  it  treats  of.  The  author  had  attained  the  fine  art  of 
packing  his  pages  full  of  the  most  exact  delineation  of 
facts,  without  pressing  the  life  and  juice  out  of  them  ;  and, 
besides  the  extraordinary  raciness  and  vivacity  of  his  man- 
ner, he  has  an  elegance  of  touch  by  no  means  common 
in  the  prose  of  his  contemporaries.  His  style,  indeed,  is 
that  of  a  man  of  genuine  literary  culture,  and  has  the  tone 
and  flavor  of  the  best  Elizabethan  prose-writers ;  almost 
none  of  the  crabbedness  of  the  sermon-makers  and  pam- 
phleteers of  his  own  day.  There  are  dainty  strokes  of 
beauty  in  his  sentences  ;  a  forceful  imaginative  vigor  ;  gay- 
ety,  and  good-hearted  sarcasm ;  all  going  to  make  up  a 
book  of  genial  descriptions  of  nature  such  as  Izaak  Walton 
must  have  delighted  in,  if  perchance  his  placid  eye  ever  fell 
upon  it.  The  book  is  broken  into  two  parts,  the  first  be- 
ing a  description  of  the  country,  the  second  an  account  of 
its  Indian  inhabitants.  Under  the  first  division,  we  have 
in  twelve  chapters  a  sketch  of  the  geographical  features  of 
New  England ;  of  the  seasons ;  of  the  climate,  "  with  the 
suitableness  of  it  to  English  bodies  for  health  and  sick- 
ness ;  "  of  the  soil ;  "  of  the  herbs,  fruits,  woods,  waters,  and 
minerals;  "  "  of  the  beasts  that  live  on  the  land, "or  in  the 
water,  or  both  ;  finally,  of  the  colonies  already  established 
there,  and  of  the  best  preparations  to  be  made  by  those 
who  intended  to  remove  into  the  new  world.  The  second 
division  of  the  work  contains  twenty  chapters,  all  relating 
to  the  Indian  tribes  of  New  England ;  their  places  of  abode ; 
their  apparel,  ornaments,  paintings ;  their  food  ;  their  per- 
sonal characteristics,  such  as  friendship,  fortitude,  intel- 
lectual condition  ;  their  politics  ;  their  worship  ;  their  wars, 
diversions,  domestic  customs,  and  means  of  livelihood. 

Thus  the  book  has  a  wide  range  of  topics  and  a  multi- 
tude of  details ;  but  it  moves  easily  through  them  all,  with 


1/2 


HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 


an  alert  and  thorough  treatment,  not  once  blundering  out 
of  the  straight  path  or  lapsing  into  dulness.  In  the  pref- 
ace, the  author  has  a  spirited  passage  avowing  that  in 
all  his  statements  he  had  been  careful  of  the  truth,  and 
wittily  defending  the  reputation  of  travellers  against  the 
calumnies  of  those  home-keeping  souls  who  denounce  as 
false  whatever  is  beyond  the  petty  sweep  of  their  own  hori- 
zons. "  I  would  be  loath  to  broach  any  thing  which  may 
puzzle  thy  belief,  and  so  justly  draw  upon  myself  that  un- 
just aspersion  commonly  laid  on  travellers  ;  of  whom  many 
say,  '  They  may  lie  by  authority,  because  none  can  control 
them  ; '  which  proverb  had  surely  his  original  from  the 
sleepy  belief  of  many  a  home-bred  dormouse,  who  compre- 
hends not  either  the  rarity  or  possibility  of  those  things  he 
sees  not ;  to  whom  the  most  classic  relations  seem  riddles 
and  paradoxes ;  of  whom  it  may  be  said,  as  once  of  Di- 
ogenes, that  because  he  circled  himself  in  the  circumference 
of  a  tub,  he  therefore  contemned  the  port  and  palace  of 
Alexander,  which  he  knew  not.  So  there  is  many  a  tub- 
brained  cynic,  who  because  anything  stranger  than  ordi- 
nary is  too  large  for  the  strait  hoops  of  his  apprehension, 
he  peremptorily  concludes  that  it  is  a  lie.  But  I  decline 
this  sort  of  thick-witted  readers,  and  dedicate  the  mite  of 
my  endeavors  to  my  more  credulous,  ingenious,  and  less 
censorious  countrymen,  for  whose  sake  I  undertook  this 
work.  .  .  .  Thus,  thou  mayest,  in  two  or  three  hours' 
travel  over  a  few  leaves,  see  and  know  that  which  cost 
him  that  writ  it,  years,  and  travel  over  sea  and  land,  before 
he  knew  it." 

It  is  a  discovery  soon  made  by  us,  as  we  turn  over  the 
pages  of  this  writer,  that  in  a  book  in  which  description 
needs  to  be  the  principal  thing,  his  style  is  most  happily 
descriptive.  He  seems  to  have  the  very  gift  of  picture- 
making,  describing  objects  so  well  that,  as  the  Arabs  say, 
the  ear  is  converted  into  the  eye.  For  example,  having 
to  tell  us  of  Massachusetts  Bay,  he  lets  us  look  at  it  for 
ourselves.  It  "  is  both  safe,  spacious,  and  deep,  free  from 


WILLIAM    WOOD. 


'73 


such  cockling  seas  as  run  upon  the  coast  of  Ireland,  and 
in  the  channels  of  England.  .  .  .  The  mariners  .  .  .  may 
behold  the  two  capes  embracing  their  welcome  ships  in 
their  arms,  which  thrust  themselves  out  into  the  sea  in 
form  of  a  half-moon,  the  surrounding  shore  being  high, 
and  showing  many  white  cliffs  in  a  most  pleasant  prospect. 
.  .  .  This  harbor  is  made  by  a  great  company  of  islands, 
whose  high  cliffs  shoulder  out  the  boisterous  seas." l 

Another  literary  trait  of  the  author,  which  he  shares 
with  many  of  the  writers  of  his  period,  is  that  of  sprinkling 
verses  along  the  landscape  of  his  prose ;  and  his  verses 
have  this  singularity,  that  they  are  often  of  considerable 
poetic  merit.  In  giving  a  description  of  the  forest  trees 
of  New  England,  he  compresses  a  multitude  of  particulars 
into  these  terse  lines,  in  which  the  literary  aptness  and 
even  imaginative  force  of  his  epithets  are  as  striking  as  is 
their  scientific  precision  : 

"Trees  both  in  hills  and  plains  in  plenty  be  ; 
The  long-lived  Oak.  and  mournful  Cypress-tree; 
Sky-towering  Pines,  and  Chestnuts  coated  rough, 
The  lasting  Cedar,  with  the  Walnut  tough  ; 
The  rosin-dropping  Fir,  for  masts  in  use; 
The  boatmen  seek  for  oars,  light,  neat  grown  Spruce; 
The  brittle  Ash,  the  ever-trembling  Asps, 
The  broad-spread  Elm,  whose  concave  harbors  wasps; 
The  water-spongy  Alder,  good  for  naught; 
Small  Eldern.  by  the  Indian  fletchers  sought; 
The  knotty  Maple,  pallid  Birch.  Hawthorns  ; 
The  horn-bound  tree,  that  to  be  cloven  scorns, 
Which  from  the  tender  vine  oft  takes  his  spouse, 
Who  twines  embracing  arms  about  his  boughs. 
Within  this  Indian  orchard  fruits  be  some: 
The  ruddy  Cherry,  and  the  jetty  Plum. 
Snake-murthering  Hazel,  with  sweet  Saxifrage, 
Whose  spurs,  in  beer,  allays  hot  fever's  rage. 
The  dyer's  Sumach,  with  more  trees  there  be, 
That  are  both  good  to  use,  and  rare  to  see."* 

1  "  New  England's  Prospect,"  2-3.  f  Ibid.  18. 


174 


HISTORY  OF  AMERICAN  LITER  A  TURE. 


In  his  chapters  on  animals  are  many  paragraphs  illus. 
trating  an  amusing  quaintness  and  quiet  mirthfulness  of 
tone,  as  well  as  the  author's  power  of  condensed  and 
graphic  description  in  verse :  "  Having  related  unto  you 
the  pleasant  situation  of  the  country,  the  healthfulness  of 
the  climate,  the  nature  of  the  soil,  with  his  vegetatives 
and  other  commodities,  it  will  not  be  amiss  to  inform  you 
of  such  irrational  creatures  as  are  daily  bred  and  con- 
tinually nourished  in  this  country,  which  do  much  conduce 
to  the  well  being  of  the  inhabitants,  affording  not  only 
meat  for  the  belly,  but  clothing  for  the  back.  The  beasts 
be  as  followeth  : 

The  kingly  Lion,  and  the  strong-armed  Bear, 
The  large-limbed  Mooses,  with  the  tripping  Deer; 
Quill-darting  Porcupines   and  Raccoons  be 
Castled  in  the  hollow  of  an  aged  tree; 
The  skipping  Squirrel,  Rabbit,  purblind  Hare, 
Immured  in  the  selfsame  castle  are; 
Lest  red-eyed  Ferrets,  wily  Foxes  should 
Them  undermine,  if  rampired  but  with  mould; 
The  grim-faced  Ounce,  and  ravenous,  howling  Wolf 
Whose  meagre  paunch  sucks  like  a  swallowing  gulf; 
Black-glistering  Otters,  and  rich-coated  Beaver, 
The  civet-scented  Musquash  smelling  ever. 

"  Concerning  lions  I  will  not  say  that  I  ever  saw  any  my- 
self ;  but  some  affirm  that  they  have  seen  a  lion  at  Cape 
Ann,  which  is  not  above  six  leagues  from  Boston  ;  some 
likewise  being  lost  in  woods  have  heard  such  terrible  roar- 
ings as  have  made  them  much  aghast;  which  must  either 
be  devils  or  lions ;  there  being  no  other  creatures  which 
use  to  roar  saving  bears,  which  have  not  such  a  terrible 
kind  of  roaring.  Besides,  Plymouth  men  have  traded  for 
lions'  skins  in  former  times."1  "  The  Porcupine  is  a  small 
thing  not  much  unlike  a  Hedgehog ;  something  bigger, 
who  stands  upon  his  guard,  and  proclaims  a  '  Noli  me 
tangere '  to  man  and  beast  that  shall  approach  too  near 

1  "  New  England's  Prospect,"  21. 


WILLIAM    WOOD. 


'75 


him,  darting  his  quills  into  their  legs  and  hides."1  "  The 
beasts  of  offence  be  Skunks,  Ferrets,  Foxes,  whose  im- 
pudence sometimes  drives  them  to  the  good-wives'  hen 
roost  to  fill  their  paunch."8  "The  Oldwives  be  a  fowl 
that  never  leave  tattling  day  or  night ;  something  bigger 
than  a  duck."* 

Altogether  the  most  remarkable  literary  quality  of  this 
writer  is  shown  in  his  delineation  of  objects  in  natural 
history :  he  has  in  these  an  extraordinary  union  of  com- 
prehensiveness, minute  accuracy,  brevity,  and  pictorial 
vividness.  Thus,  in  his  account  of  wolves  and  humming- 
birds are  passages  that  indicate  in  the  author  an  uncom- 
mon power  of  close  and  definite  observation,  together 
with  an  easy  command  of  the  words  that  are  at  once 
nicely,  concisely,  and  poetically  descriptive.  Wolves  "be 
made  much  like  a  mongrel,  being  big-boned,  lank-paunched, 
deep-breasted,  having  a  thick  neck  and  head,  prick  ears, 
and  long  snout,  with  dangerous  teeth,  long  staring  hair, 
and  a  great  bush-tail.  It  is  thought  of  many  that  our 
English  mastiffs  might  be  too  hard  for  them  ;  but  it  is  no 
such  matter,  for  they  care  no  more  for  an  ordinary  mas- 
tiff, than  an  ordinary  mastiff  cares  for  a  cur;  many  good 
dogs  have  been  spoiled  with  them.  Once  a  fair  grey- 
hound hearing  them  at  their  howlings,  run  out  to  chide 
them,  who  was  torn  in  pieces  before  he  could  be  rescued. 
One  of  them  makes  no  more  bones  to  run  away  with  a 
pig  than  a  dog  to  run  away  with  a  marrow  bone.  .  .  . 
Late  at  night  and  early  in  the  morning  they  set  up  their 
howlings,  and  call  their  companies  together  at  night  to 
hunt,  at  morning  to  sleep ;  in  a  word  they  be  the  greatest 
inconveniency  the  country  hath,  both  for  matter  of  damage 
to  private  men  in  particular,  and  the  whole  country  in 
general."4  "The  Humbird  is  one  of  the  wonders  of  the 
country,  being  no  bigger  than  a  hornet,  yet  hath  all  the 
dimensions  of  a  bird,  as  bill  and  wings,  with  quills,  spider- 

"•  New  England's  Prospect,"  24.       »  Ibid.  25.       »  Ibid.  34.       4  Ibid.  26-27. 


!^6  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITER  A  TURE. 

like  legs,  small  claws.  For  color  she  is  as  glorious  as  the 
rainbow;  as  she  flies  she  makes  a  little  humming  noise  like 
a  humblebee  :  wherefore  she  is  called  the  Humbird."1 

"  Having  done  with  these,"  he  says,  "  let  me  lead  you 
from  the  land  to  the  sea,  to  view  what  commodities  may 
come  from  thence;"2  and  in  the  course  of  this  descrip- 
tion, he  mentions  with  his  usual  excellence  of  apt  epithets : 

"  The  king  of  waters,  the  sea-shouldering  Whale  ; 
The  snuffing  Grampus,  with  the  oily  Seal  ; 
The  storm-presaging  Porpus;  Herring-Hog; 
Line-shearing  Shark,  the  Catfish,  and  Sea-Dog; 

The  stately  Bass,  old  Neptune's  fleeting  post 
That  tides  it  out  and  in  from  sea  to  coast."  3 

It  was  not  the  author's  plan  to  deal  at  any  length  with 
the  history  and  social  development  of  the  colonies  estab- 
lished in  New  England ;  yet  he  does  not  altogether  pass 
them  over,  nor  does  he  forget  the  needs  of  those  in  the 
mother-land  who  might  be  considering  the  project  of  com- 
ing to  America.  He  speaks  sarcastically  of  the  ignorant 
questions  often  asked  in  England  concerning  the  new 
land,  as,  "  whether  the  sun  shines  there  or  no  ;  "  4  and  of 
the  "groundless  calumniations"  of  those  who  had  come  to 
the  country  with  fantastic  and  impossible  notions  of  what 
was  to  be  found  there,  and  had  of  course  abandoned  it  in 
disgust  :  "  I  have  myself  heard  some  say  that  they  heard 
it  was  a  rich  land,  a  brave  country ;  but  when  they  came 
there  they  could  see  nothing  but  a  few  canvas  booths  and 
old  houses,  supposing  at  the  first  to  have  found  walled 
towns,  fortifications  and  cornfields,  as  if  towns  could  have 
built  themselves,  or  cornfields  have  grown  of  themselves 
without  the  husbandry  of  man.  These  men,  missing  of 
their  expectations,  returned  home  and  railed  against  the 


1  "  New  England's  Prospect,"  31.  *  Ibid.  35. 

8  Ibid.  36.  «  Ibid.  61, 


WILLIAM    WOOD. 


177 


country." l  The  second  part  of  the  book  is  devoted  to  the 
Indians,  and  is  written,  as  the  author  says,  "  in  a  more  light 
and  facetious  style,  .  .  .  because  their  carriage  and  beha- 
vior hath  afforded  more  matter  of  mirth  and  laughter,  than 
gravity  and  wisdom  ;  and  therefore  I  have  inserted  many 
passages  of  mirth  concerning  them,  to  spice  the  rest  of  my 
more  serious  discourse  and  to  make  it  more  pleasant."  a 
But  the  author's  merry  eye,  never  failing  to  catch  a  glimpse 
of  whatever  is  amusing,  is  likewise  alert  for  whatever  is  in- 
structive ;  and  the  really  fine  and  wise  sketch  which  he 
has  given  of  the  various  savage  tribes  of  New  England, 
is  not  likely  to  be  scorned  by  us,  even  though  he  may  have 
committed  the  crime  of  paving  the  highway  of  knowledge 
with  entertainment.  His  study  of  the  Indians  seems  to 
have  embraced  not  only  their  habits  in  this  world,  but  their 
notions  about  the  world  to  come ;  and  in  his  chapter  on 
"  their  deaths,  burials,  and  mourning,"  we  find  these  nim- 
ble and  affluent  sentences,  which,  besides  giving  us  con- 
siderable amusing  information,  reproduce  for  us  the  very 
manner  of  the  best  Elizabethan  prose:  "Although  the 
Indians  be  of  lusty  and  healthful  bodies,  not  experimen- 
tally knowing  the  catalogue  of  those  health-wasting  dis- 
eases which  are  incident  to  other  countries,  .  .  .  but  spin 
out  the  thread  of  their  days  to  a  fair  length,  numbering 
three  score,  four  score,  some  a  hundred  years,  before  the 
world's  universal  summoner  cite  them  to  the  craving  grave ; 
but  the  date  of  their  life  expired,  and  death's  arrestment 
seizing  upon  them,  all  hope  of  recovery  being  past,  then 
to  behold  and  hear  their  throbbing  sobs  and  deep-fetched 
sighs,  their  grief-wrung  hands,  and  tear-bedewed  cheeks, 
their  doleful  cries,  would  draw  tears  from  adamantine  eyes, 
that  be  but  spectators  of  their  mournful  obsequies.  The 
glut  of  their  grief  being  passed,  they  commit  the  corpse 
of  their  deceased  friends  to  the  ground,  over  whose  grave 
is  for  a  long  time  spent  many  a  briny  tear,  deep  groan 

1  "  New  England1!  Prospect,"  5»-  '  Ibid.  "  To  the  Reader." 

12 


1 73  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

and  Irish-like  bowlings.  .  .  .  These  are  the  mourners  with- 
out  hope ;  yet  do  they  hold  the  immortality  of  the  never- 
dying  soul,  that  it  shall  pass  to  the  South-West  Ely- 
sium, concerning  which  their  Indian  faith  jumps  much 
with  the  Turkish  Alcoran,  holding  it  to  be  a  kind  of 
paradise,  wherein  they  shall  everlastingly  abide,  solacing 
themselves  in  odoriferous  gardens,  fruitful  cornfields,  green 
meadows,  bathing  their  tawny  hides  in  the  cool  streams  of 
pleasant  rivers,  and  shelter  themselves  from  heat  and  cold 
in  the  sumptuous  palaces  framed  by  the  skill  of  Nature's 
curious  contrivement ;  concluding  that  neither  care  nor 
pain  shall  molest  them,  but  that  Nature's  bounty  will  ad- 
minister all  things  with  a  voluntary  contribution  from  the 
overflowing  storehouse  of  their  Elysian  hospital."1 

So  vigilant  an  observer  as  was  this  author,  would  not  be 
likely  to  let  slip  any  trait  that  might  illustrate  the  gro- 
tesque and  droll  effects  wrought  by  the  contact  of  English 
culture  with  the  mental  childhood  of  the  Indians.  Noth- 
ing in  this  kind  has  ever  ministered  more  to  the  white 
man's  mirth  than  the  impression  made  upon  the  savages 
by  our  improvements  in  the  arts,  which  of  course  seemed 
to  them  to  be  things  enormous,  superhuman,  and  dreadful  ; 
"  These  Indians  being  strangers  to  arts  and  sciences,  and 
being  unacquainted  with  the  inventions  that  are  common 
to  a  civilized  people,  are  ravished  with  admiration  at  the 
first  view  of  any  such  sight.  They  took  the  first  ship  they 
saw  for  a  walking  island,  the  mast  to  be  a  tree,  the  sail 
white  clouds,  and  the  discharging  of  ordnance  for  light- 
ning and  thunder,  which  did  much  trouble  them ;  but 
this  thunder  being  over,  and  this  moving  island  steadied 
with  an  anchor,  they  manned  out  their  canoes  to  go  and 
pick  strawberries  there ;  but  being  saluted  by  the  way 
with  a  broadside,  they  cried  out  '  what  much  hoggery,'  '  so 
big  walk,'  and  '  so  big  speak,'  and  '  by  and  by  kill,'  which 
caused  them  to  turn  back,  not  daring  to  approach  till  they 

1  "New  England's  Prospect,"  104-105. 


WILLIAM    WOOD. 


179 


were  sent  for.  They  do  much  extol  and  wonder  at  the 
English  for  their  strange  inventions,  especially  for  a  wind- 
mill, which  in  their  esteem  was  little  less  than  the  world's 
wonder,  for  the  strangeness  of  his  whisking  motion  and 
the  sharp  teeth  biting  the  corn  (as  they  term  it)  into  such 
small  pieces.  They  were  loath  at  the  first  to  come  near 
to  his  long  arms,  or  to  abide  in  so  tottering  a  tabernacle, 
though  now  they  dare  go  anywhere  so  far  as  they  have  an 
English  guide."1 

His  chapter  on  the  Aberginians,  a  tribe  of  savages  re- 
nowned for  their  stalwart  and  superb  physical  proportions, 
furnishes  us  with  another  instance  of  his  remarkable  gift 
of  concentrated,  exact,  and  vivid  description.  They  are 
"  between  five  or  six  foot  high,  straight-bodied,  strongly 
composed,  smooth-skinned,  merry-countenanced,  of  com- 
plexion something  more  swarthy  than  Spaniards,  black- 
haired,  high-foreheaded,  black-eyed,  out-nosed,  broad- 
shouldered,  brawny-armed,  long-  and  slender-handed,  out- 
breasted,  small-waisted,  lank-bellied,  well-thighed,  flat- 
kneed,  handsome-grown  legs,  and  small  feet.  In  a  word, 
take  them  when  the  blood  brisks  in  their  veins,  when  the 
flesh  is  on  their  backs,  and  marrow  in  their  bones,  when 
they  frolic  in  their  antique  deportments  and  Indian  pos- 
tures, and  they  are  more  amiable  to  behold  (though  only 
in  Adam's  livery)  than  many  a  compounded  fantastic  in 
the  newest  fashion."  *  "  But  a  sagamore  with  a  humbird 
in  his  ear  for  a  pendant,  a  black  hawk  on  his  occiput  for 
his  plume,  mowhackees  for  his  gold  chain,  good  store  of 
wampompeage  begirting  his  loins,  his  bow  in  his  hand, 
his  quiver  at  his  back,  with  six  naked  Indian  spatter- 
lashes  at  his  heels  for  his  guard,  thinks  himself  little  in- 
ferior to  the  great  Cham ;  he  will  not  stick  to  say,  he  is 
all  one  with  King  Charles.  He  thinks  he  can  blow  down 
castles  with  his  breath,  and  conquer  kingdoms  with  his 
conceit."1 

»  "  New  England's  Prospect,"  87.  » Ibid.  70.  »  Ibid.  74. 


!8o  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITER  A  TURB. 

V. 

A  writer  of  more  pronounced  scientific  intentions,  though 
of  far  less  literary  skill,  was  John  Josselyn,  who,  belonging 
to  an  ancient  and  aristocratic  family  in  England,  had  the 
distinction  of  being  able  to  subscribe  his  name  with  the 
proud  affix,  "  Gentleman."  His  father,  Sir  Thomas  Josse- 
lyn, of  Kent,  was  an  associate  of  Sir  Ferdinando  Gorges  in 
schemes  of  American  colonization ;  his  brother  was  that 
Henry  Josselyn,  who,  from  about  the  year  1634  onward  for 
forty  years,  was  a  leading  land-holder  and  magistrate  in 
the  province  of  Maine,  and  who,  in  life-long  contests  with 
white  men  and  Indians,  displayed  an  unslumbering  activity 
of  courage  and  of  hate, — a  characteristic  exactly  touched 
by  Whittier  in  a  single  vivid  line  of  Mogg  Megone — 
"  Grey  Jocelyn's  eye  is  never  sleeping.' 

John  Josselyn,  the  author,  was  twice  an  inhabitant  of  this 
country.  He  came  first  in  1638,  remaining  only  fifteen 
months  ;  he  came  again  in  1663,  and  remained  eight  years: 
in  both  cases  passing  the  most  of  his  time  on  his  brother's 
plantation  at  Scarborough.  In  connection  with  his  first 
arrival  in  Boston,  he  mentions  a  fact  that  gives  us  a  pleas- 
ant glimpse  of  the  intellectual  exchanges  already  begun 
between  the  men  of  books  in  America  and  the  men  of 
books  in  England  :  he  states  that  he  first  paid  his  respects 
to  "  Mr.  Winthrop,  the  governor,"  and  that  he  next  called 
upon  the  great  pulpit-orator,  John  Cotton,  to  whom  he 
"  delivered  from  Mr.  Francis  Quartes,  the  poet,  the  trans- 
lation of  the  i6th,  25th,  5 1st,  88th,  ii3th,  and  I37th 
Psalms,  into  English  metre,  for  his  approbation."  '  Though 
his  family  in  England  appear  to  have  been  attached  to  the 
Puritan  party,  he  himself  certainly  had  little  sympathy 
with  the  Puritans  of  New  England,  concerning  whom  he 


"'Two  Voyages  to  N.   £.,"225-226,  reprinted  in  3   Mass.    Hist.   Soc 
Coll.  III.  211-354. 


JOHN  JOSSEL  YN.  1 8 1 

In  one  place  frees  his  mind,  with  a  refreshing  copious, 
ness  of  frank  words.  Their  leading  men,  he  tells  us,  "  are 
damnable  rich,  .  .  .  inexplicably  covetous  and  proud: 
they  receive  your  gifts  but  as  an  homage  or  tribute  due  to 
their  transcendency.  .  .  .  The  chiefest  objects  of  disci, 
pline,  true  religion,  and  morality,  they  want ;  some  are  of  a 
linsey-woolsey  disposition,  ...  all  like  Ethiopians,  white 
in  the  teeth  only ;  full  of  ludification,  and  injurious  deal- 
ing, and  cruelty."  l 

There  is  no  evidence  that  he  engaged  in  any  kind  of 
business  in  America.  He  was  probably  a  bachelor :  and 
finding  a  comfortable  home  on  his  brother's  estate,  he  had 
leisure  to  indulge  his  love  of  reading  and  particularly  his 
fondness  for  researches  in  natural  history.  He  made  it 
his  ambition,  as  he  informs  us,  "  to  discover  the  natural, 
physical,  and  chirurgical  rarities  of  this  new-found  world  ": 
He  appears  to  have  wandered  at  his  will  in  the  forests  and 
on  the  mountains  of  Maine,  to  have  dropped  his  hook  in 
many  waters,  and  to  have  explored  the  islands  along  the 
coast,  everywhere  soliciting  nature  to  deliver  up  to  him 
her  mysteries.  Some  of  these  mysteries,  indeed,  did  not 
consent  to  be  delivered  up  passively  to  the  prying  stran- 
ger, even  for  the  advancement  of  science  among  mankind ; 
as  was  made  apparent,  for  example,  in  his  somewhat  too 
zealous  investigation  of  that  uneasy  Americanism,  a  hor- 
net's nest :  "  In  the  afternoon  I  walked  into  the  woods 
.  .  .  ,  and  happening  into  a  fine  broad  walk,  ...  I  wan- 
dered till  I  chanced  to  spy  a  fruit,  as  I  thought,  like  a 
pine-apple  plated  with  scales.  It  was  as  big  as  the  crown 
of  a  woman's  hat.  I  made  bold  to  step  unto  it,  with  an 
intent  to  have  gathered  it.  No  sooner  had  I  touched  it, 
but  hundreds  of  wasps  were  about  me.  At  last  I  cleared  my- 
self from  them,  .  .  .  but  by  the  time  I  was  come  into  the 
house,  .  .  .  they  hardly  knew  me  but  by  my  garments." ' 

1 "  Two  Voyages  to  N.  E."  331.  •  "  New  England's  Rarities,"  35. 

'  "  Two  Voyages  to  N.  E."  231-232. 


1 82  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

This  grim  practical  joke  of  the  wasps  at  the  expense  of 
the  learned  naturalist,  which  must  have  long  supplied 
food  for  bucolic  mirth  among  the  woodmen  of  New  Eng- 
land, is  deftly  used  by  Longfellow  in  his  "  Tragedy  of 
John  Endicott,"  when  he  makes  the  troubled  inn-keeper 
of  Boston,  Samuel  Cole,  exclaim  : 

"  I  feel  like  Master  Josselyn  when  he  found 
The  hornet's  nest,  and  thought  it  some  strange  fruit, 
Until  the  seeds  came  out,  and  then  he  dropped  it."  ' 

It  is  as  a  naturalist,  and  as  the  writer  of  two  books  em- 
bodying the  results  of  his  observations  in  that  capacity, 
that  John  Josselyn  has  a  place  in  our  literary  annals.  He 
appears  indeed  to  have  been  a  man  of  some  general  learn- 
ing. He  quotes  Pliny,  Lucan,  Isidore,  and  Paracelsus;  all 
his  Biblical  citations  are  from  the  Vulgate  ;  he  brings  in  a 
proverb  in  the  Italian  ;  and  among  the  writers  of  his  own 
country,  he  has  references  to  Drayton,  Ben  Jonson,  Sir 
John  Davies,  Sylvester,  George  Sandys,  Captain  John 
Smith,  and  to  Charles  the  First ;  to  the  last  of  whom, 
as  the  supposed  author  of  "  Eikon  Basilike,"  he  alludes 
in  the  sympathetic  cant  of  the  Restoration,  as  "  the  royal 
martyr."  John  Josselyn's  first  book,  entitled  "  New 
England's  Rarities  Discovered  in  Birds,  Beasts,  Fishes, 
Serpents,  and  Plants  of  that  Country,"  was  published  in 
London  in  1672  ;  his  second  book,  considerably  larger  than 
the  first,  and  entitled  "  An  Account  of  Two  Voyages  to 
New  England,"  was  published  in  the  same  place  in  1674. 

Although  his  main  purpose  in  these  books  was  to  give 
an  account  of  American  productions  in  natural  history,  he 
did  not  altogether  leave  out  descriptions  of  the  country  in 
general.  Thus  he  speaks  of  "  a  ridge  of  mountains  .  .  . 
known  by  the  name  of  the  White  Mountains,  upon  which 
lieth  snow  all  the  year,  and  is  a  landmark  twenty  miles 
off  at  sea."  *  One  of  the  highest  of  these  mountains  is 

1  "  New  England  Tragedies,"  35.         *  "  New  England's  Rarities,"  35-36. 


JOHN  JOSSEL  Y27.  \  83 

'  called  the  Sugar  Loaf,  ...  a  rude  heap  of  massy  stones 
piled  one  upon  another.  .  .  .  From  this  rocky  hill  you 
may  see  the  whole  country  round  about :  it  is  far  above 
the  lower  clouds,  and  from  hence  we  beheld  a  vapor,  like 
a  great  pillar,  drawn  up  by  the  sunbeams  out  of  a  great 
lake  or  pond  into  the  air,  where  it  was  formed  into  a 
cloud.  The  country  beyond  these  hills  northward  is 
daunting  terrible,  being  full  of  rocky  hills  .  .  .  and  clothed 
with  infinite  thick  woods."1 

In  dealing  with  objects  in  natural  history,  the  most 
valuable  part  of  his  work  is  in  botany.  Of  course  that 
science  was  then  in  a  crude  condition,  and  it  may  be  that 
even  in  that  condition  Josselyn  had  not  perfectly  mastered 
it.  According  to  the  decision  of  Professor  Edward  Tuck- 
erman,  Josselyn  is  "little  more  than  a  herbalist;  but  it 
is  enough  that  he  gets  beyond  that  entirely  unscientific 
character.  He  certainly  botanized,  and  made  botanical 
use  of  Gerard  and  his  other  authorities.  The  credit  be- 
longs to  him  of  indicating  several  genera  as  new  which 
were  so,  and  peculiar  to  the  American  Flora.  .  .  .  There 
are  important  parts  of  his  account  of  our  plants,  in  which 
we  know  with  certainty  what  he  intended  to  tell  us  ;  and 
farther,  that  this  was  worth  the  telling."1 

Beyond  the  realm  of  botany,  his  contributions  to  natural 
history  are  less  esteemed.  Indeed,  even  within  that  realm, 
he  was  capable  of  making  the  announcement  that,  in 
America,  barley  "  commonly  degenerates  into  oats,"  8  and 
that  "summer-wheat  many  times  changeth  into  rye;"4 
while  in  the  domain  of  the  other  sciences,  he  indulges  in 
many  assertions  that  exhibit  the  uncritical  habits  of  even 
scientific  observers  in  the  seventeenth  century.  He  in- 
forms us,  with  all  gravity,  that  in  their  assemblies  the 
Indians  commonly  carry  on  their  discussions  "  in  perfect 
hexameter  verse,"  doing  this  "  extempore."  *  He  assures  us 

1  "  New  England's  Rarities,"  36.  «  Ibid.  15-16.  *  Ibid.  143. 

«  "  Two  Voyages  to  N.  E.w  336.  •  «  New  England's  Rarities,"  38. 


1 84  HIS  TOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITER  A  TURE 

that  there  is  in  New  England  a  species  of  frog,  "  which 
chirp  in  the  spring  like  sparrows,  and  croak  like  toads  in 
autumn;"  some  of  which  "when  they  sit  upon  their 
breech  are  a  foot  high  ;  "  while  "up  in  the  country"  they 
are  "  as  big  as  a  child  of  a  year  old." l  He  tells  of  swal- 
lows which,  loving  to  dwell  in  chimneys,  construct  their 
nests  so  as  to  hang  down  "  by  a  clew-like  string  a  yard 
long."  These  swallows,  he  adds,  "  commonly  have  four 
or  five  young  ones,  and  when  they  go  away,  which  is  much 
about  the  time  that  swallows  use  to  depart,  they  never  fail 
to  throw  down  one  of  their  young  birds  into  the  room  by 
way  of  gratitude.  I  have  more  than  once  observed  that, 
against  the  ruin  of  the  family,  these  birds  will  suddenly 
forsake  the  house  and  come  no  more."2  He  gives  a  bril- 
liant description  of  the  Pilhannaw,  "  a  monstrous  great 
bird  .  .  .  four  times  as  big  as  a  goshawk,  white-mailed, 
having  two  or  three  purple  feathers  in  her  head  as  long 
as  geese's  feathers ;  .  .  .  her  head  is  as  big  as  a  child's 
of  a  year  old;  a  very  princely  bird.  When  she  soar* 
abroad,  all  sort  of  feathered  creatures  hide  themselves ; 
yet  she  never  preys  upon  any  of  them,  but  upon  fawn:J 
and  jackals.  She  aeries  in  the  woods  upon  the  high  hill.-j 
of  Ossapy."  8  These  sentences  upon  the  Pilhannaw  are 
indeed  delightful,  the  last  one  in  particular  being  very 
sweet,  with  a  certain  far-off,  appealing  melody ;  and  thn 
artistic  merit  of  the  whole  picture  is  perhaps  enhanced  by 
the  consideration,  that  it  seems  to  have  been  on  his  part: 
an  exploit  of  pure  imagination,  supplemented  by  some 
guess-work  and  hear-say, — this  princely  bird  of  Josselyn's 
being  probably  nothing  but  "  a  confused  conception  made 
up  from  several  accounts  of  large  birds  "  seen  in  different 
parts  of  America.4 

It  may  not  surprise  us  to  ascertain  that  this  author, 
whose  scientific  methods  had  in  them  so  little  severity, 
should  have  stopped  occasionally  to  reproach  his  "  skeptic 

"  New  England's  Rarities,"  76-77.  *  Ibid.  40. 

1  Ibid.  40-41.  •  Professor  E.  Tuckerman.  ibid.  note. 


JOHN  JO^SEL  ry.  !  8  5 

readers  **  for  "  muttering  out  of  their  scuttle-mouths  H  ex- 
pressions of  derisive  unbelief  in  his  statements.  As  a 
student  of  nature,  his  own  capacity  for  receiving  at  the 
hands  of  other  narrators  prodigious  gift-horses  which  he 
was  too  polite  to  look  very  sharply  in  the  mouth,  implied 
in  him  at  least  this  compensating  merit — a  tolerant  and 
catholic  mood.  And  is  it  not  possible,  after  all,  that  in  our 
search  for  knowledge,  swiftness  to  reject  may  be  as  great 
an  impediment  to  progress  as  swiftness  to  accept?  If  ex- 
treme credulity  swallows  down  a  good  deal  of  error,  may 
it  not  be  that  extreme  incredulity  spurns  away  a  good  deal 
of  truth  ?  At  any  rate,  our  gentle  author  seems  to  have 
had  some  such  notion ;  for  in  his  life-time  he  walked  quite 
freely  about  this  earth,  keeping  his  eyes  and  ears  open  for 
the  discovery  of  such  matters  as  he  had  not  known  before, 
and  believing,  as  he  tells  us,  "  that  there  are  many  stranger 
things  in  the  world  than  are  to  be  seen  between  London 
and  Stanes."1 


1  "  Two  Voyages  to  N.  E.**  229.  Josselyn  also  publisher)  in  London,  in 
1674,  "  Chronological  Observations  of  America,  from  the  year  of  the  World 
to  the  year  of  Christ,  1673."  It  is  reprinted  in  3  Mass.  Hut.  Soc.  Coll.  III. 
355-396;  *nd  is  meagre  and  unimportant.  Mr.  Justin  Winsor  informs  me 
that,  in  bis  opinion,  the  latter  work  originally  appeared  not  by  itself  but  a*  a 
part  of  the  "  Two  Voyages  to  N.  E." 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

NEW  ENGLAND  :   THEOLOGICAL  AND   RELIGIOUS  WRITERS. 

I. — The  supremacy  of  the  clergy  in  early  New  England — Their  worthiness 
— Their  public  manifestations — How  they  studied  and  preached — The 
quality  and  vastness  of  the  work  they  did. 

II. — Thomas  Hooker  one  of  the  three  greatest — His  career  in  England — 
Comes  to  Massachusetts — Founds  Hartford — A  prolific  writer — His  com- 
manding traits  as  a  man  and  an  orator — His  published  writings — Literary 
characteristics — His  frankness  in  damnatory  preaching — Total  depravity 
— Formalism — Need  of  Christ — The  versatility  and  pathos  of  his  appeals. 

III. — New  England's  debt  to  Archbishop  Laud — Thomas  Shepard's  ani- 
mated interview  with  him,  and  its  consequences — Shepard's  settlement  in 
America — Personal  peculiarities — Illustrations  of  his  theology  and  method 
of  discourse. 

IV. —  John  Cotton — His  brave  sermon  in  St.  Mary's  Church,  Cambridge- 
Becomes  rector  of  St.  Botolph's,  Boston — His  great  fame  in  England — 
His  ascendency  in  New  England — Correspondence  with  Cromwell — His 
death  announced  by  a  comet — As  a  student  and  writer. 

V. — A  group  of  minor  prophets — Peter  Bulkley  founder  of  Concord — The  man 
— His  "Gospel  Covenant" — John  Norton — Succeeds  John  Cotton — His 
style  as  a  writer— William  Hooke— His  life— His  "  New  England's  Tears 
for  Old  England's  Fears  " — Charles  Chauncey's  career  in  England  and 
America — Becomes  president  of  Harvard — Great  usefulness  as  an  educa- 
tor— His  scholarship,  industry,  old  age — His  "  Plain  Doctrine  of  Justifi- 
cation"— His  unpublished  writings  made  useful. 

I. 

AMONG  the  earliest  official  records  of  Massachusetts, 
there  is  a  memorandum  of  articles  needed  there  and  to  be 
procured  from  England.  The  list  includes  beans,  pease, 
vine-planters,  potatoes,  hop-roots,  pewter-bottles,  brass- 
ladles,  spoons,  and  ministers.  It  is  but  just  to  add  that  in 
the  original  document  the  article  here  mentioned  last, 
stands  first ;  even  as  in  the  seventeenth  century,  in  New 

1 86 


AfLV/STEKS  IN  NEW  ENGLAND. 


I87 


England,  that  article  would  certainly  have  stood  first  in 
any  conceivable  list  of  necessaries,  for  this  world  or  the 
world  to  come.  An  old  historian,  in  describing  the  estab- 
lishment of  the  colony  of  Plymouth,  gives  the  true  sequence 
in  the  two  stages  of  the  process  when  he  says,  they 
"  planted  a  church  of  Christ  there  and  set  up  civil  govern- 
ment."1 In  the  year  1640,  a  company  of  excellent  people 
resolved  to  found  a  new  town  in  Massachusetts,  the  town 
of  Woburn;  but  before  getting  the  town  incorporated, 
they  took  pains  to  build  a  meeting-house  and  a  parsonage, 
to  choose  a  minister,  and  to  fix  the  arrangements  for  his 
support.1  New  England  was  a  country,  as  a  noted  writer 
of  the  early  time  expresses  it,  "  whose  interests  were  most 
remarkably  and  generally  enwrapped  in  its  ecclesiastical 
circumstances ;  "  *  it  followed  that  for  any  town  within  its 
borders  the  presence  or  absence  of  a  "  laborious  and  illu- 
minating ministry  "  meant  the  presence  or  absence  of  ex- 
ternal prosperity.  Indeed,  the  same  writer  stated  the  case 
with  delightful  commercial  frankness  when  he  remarked  : 
"  The  gospel  has  evidently  been  the  making  of  our  towns."  * 
During  the  first  sixty  years,  New  England  was  a  theocracy, 
and  the  ministers  were  in  reality  the  chief  officers  of  state. 
It  was  not  a  departure  from  their  sphere  for  them  to  deal 
with  politics  ;  for  everything  pertaining  to  the  state  was 
included  in  the  sphere  of  the  church.  On  occasion  of  an 
exciting  popular  election,  in  1637,  Mr.  John  Wilson,  one 
of  the  pastors  of  Boston,  climbed  upon  the  bough  of  a 
tree,  and  from  that  high  pulpit,  with  great  authority,  ha- 
rangued the  crowd  upon  their  political  duties.  The  greatest 
political  functionaries,  recognizing  the  ministers  as  in  some 
sense  their  superior  officers,  "  asked  their  advice  upon  the 
most  important  occasions,"  8  and  sometimes  even  appealed 
to  them  for  the  settlement  of  personal  differences  that 

1  Edw.  Johnson,  "Wonder- Working  Providence,"  18. 

*  Ibid.  W.  F.  Poole's  Introd.  xci. 

*  "  Magnalia,"  I.  296.  *  Ibid.  I.  89. 

*  John  Eliot,  in  I  Mass.  Hist.  Soc.  Coll.  X.  i. 


I  88  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITER  A  TURE. 

had  arisen  among  themselves.  In  1632,  the  deputy-gov- 
ernor, Thomas  Dudley,  having  a  grievance  against  the 
governor,  John  Winthrop,  made  complaint  to  two  minis- 
ters, John  Wilson  and  Thomas  Welde ;  whereupon  a  coun- 
cil of  five  ministers  was  convened  to  call  before  them  the 
governor  and  the  lieutenant  governor,  and  to  hear  what 
they  had  to  say  for  themselves ;  having  heard  it,  the  min- 
isters "  went  apart  for  one  hour,"  and  then  returned  with 
their  decision,  to  which  the  governor  meekly  submitted.1 
To  speak  ill  of  ministers  was  a  species  of  sedition.  In  1636, 
a  citizen  of  Boston  was  required  to  pay  a  fine  of  forty 
pounds  and  to  make  a  public  apology,  for  saying  that  all 
the  ministers  but  three  preached  a  covenant  of  works.2 

The  objects  of  so  much  public  deference  were  not  un- 
aware of  their  authority  :  they  seldom  abused  it ;  they 
never  forgot  it.  If  ever  men,  for  real  worth  and  greatness, 
deserved  such  preeminence,  they  did ;  they  had  wisdom, 
great  learning,  great  force  of  will,  devout  consecration, 
philanthropy,  purity  of  life.  For  once  in  the  history  of 
the  world,  the  sovereign  places  were  filled  by  the  sovereign 
men.  They  bore  themselves  with  the  air  of  leadership : 
they  had  the  port  of  philosophers,  noblemen,  and  kings. 
The  writings  of  our  earliest  times  are  full  of  reference  to 
the  majesty  of  their  looks,  the  awe  inspired  by  their 
presence,  the  grandeur  and  power  of  their  words. 

Men  like  these,  with  such  an  ascendency  as  this  over  the 
public,  could  not  come  before  the  public  too  often,  or  stay 
there  too  long ;  and  on  two  days  in  every  seven,  they  pre- 
sented themselves  in  solemn  state  to  the  people,  and  chal- 
lenged undivided  attention.  Their  pulpits  were  erected 
far  aloft,  and  as  remote  as  possible  from  the  congrega- 
tion, typifying  the  awful  distance  and  the  elevation  of  the 
sacred  office  which  there  exercised  its  mightiest  function. 
Below,  among  the  pews,  the  people  were  arranged,  not  in 

1  J.  Winthrop,  "  Hist.  N.  E."  I.  98. 

*  T.  Hutchinson,  "  Hist.  Mass.  Bay,"  I.  60. 


WORSHIP  IN  NEW  ENGLAND. 


189 


families,  but  according  to  rank  and  age  and  sex ;  the  old 
men  in  one  place,  the  old  dames  in  another ;  young  men 
and  maidens  prudently  seated  far  apart ;  the  boys  having 
the  luxury  of  the  pulpit  stairs  and  the  gallery.  Failure  to 
attend  church  was  not  a  thing  to  be  tolerated,  except  in 
cases  of  utter  necessity.  People  who  stayed  away  were 
hunted  up  by  the  tithing-men :  for  one  needless  absence 
they  were  to  be  fined  ;  for  such  absence  persisted  in  four 
weeks,  they  were  to  be  set  in  the  stocks  or  lodged  in  a 
wooden  cage.  Within  the  meeting-house,  the  entire  con- 
gregation, but  especially  the  boys,  were  vigilantly  guarded 
by  the  town  constables,  each  one  being  armed  with  a  rod, 
at  one  end  of  which  was  a  hare's  foot,  and  at  the  other 
end  a  hare's  tail.  This  weapon  they  wielded  with  justice 
tempered  by  gallantry:  if  a  woman  fell  asleep,  it  was 
enough  to  tingle  her  face  gently  with  the  bushy  end  of  the 
rod ;  but  if  the  sleeper  were  a  boy,  he  was  vigorously 
thumped  awake  by  the  hard  end  of  it.1 

In  the  presence  of  God  and  of  his  appointed  ministers, 
it  was  not  for  man  to  be  impatient ;  and  the  modern  frailty 
that  clamors  for  short  prayers  and  short  sermons  had  not 
invaded  their  sanctuaries  or  even  their  thoughts.  When 
they  came  to  church,  they  settled  themselves  down  to  a 
regular  religious  siege,  which  was  expected  to  last  from 
three  to  five  hours.  Upon  the  pulpit  stood  an  hour-glass ; 
and  as  the  sacred  service  of  prayer  and  psalm  and  sermon 
moved  ruthlessly  forward,  it  was  the  duty  of  the  sexton  to 
go  up  hour  by  hour  and  turn  the  glass  over.  The  prayers 
were  of  course  extemporaneous ;  and  in  that  solemn  act, 
the  gift  of  long  continuance  was  successfully  cultivated  : 
the  preacher,  rising  into  raptures  of  devotion  and  storming 
heaven  with  volleys  of  petitionary  syllogism,  could  hardly 
be  required  to  take  much  note  of  the  hour-glass.  "  Mr. 
Torrey  stood  up  and  prayed  near  two  hours,"  writes  a 
Harvard  student  in  the  seventeenth  century;  "but  the 

1  T.  W.  Higginson,  "  Young  Folks'  Hist  U.  S."  76-77- 


igQ  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

time  obliged  him  to  close,  to  our  regret;  and  we  could 
have  gladly  heard  him  an  hour  longer."  l  Their  sermons 
were  of  similar  longitude,  and  were  obviously  exhaustive 
— except  of  the  desire  of  the  people  to  hear  more.  John 
Winthrop  mentions  a  discourse  preached  at  Cambridge  by 
Thomas  Hooker  when  he  was  ill :  the  minister  at  first  pro- 
ceeded in  his  discourse  for  fifteen  minutes,  then  stopped 
and  rested  half  an  hour,  then  resumed  and  preached  for 
two  hours.2  Well  might  Nathaniel  Ward,  in  his  whimsical 
satire,  make  this  propensity  of  himself  and  his  brethren 
the  theme  of  a  confession  which  was  at  least  half  in  ear- 
nest :  "  We  have  a  strong  weakness  in  New  England  that 
when  we  are  speaking  we  know  not  how  to  conclude.  We 
make  many  ends  before  we  make  an  end.  .  .  .  We  cannot 
help  it,  though  we  can ;  which  is  the  arch  infirmity  in  all 
morality.  We  are  so  near  the  west  pole  that  our  longitudes 
are  as  long  as  any  wise  man  would  wish,  and  somewhat 
longer.  I  scarce  know  any  adage  more  grateful  than  '  Gra- 
ta brevitas.'  "3 

In  his  theme,  in  his  audience,  in  the  appointments  of 
each  sacred  occasion,  the  preacher  had  everything  to  stimu- 
late him  to  put  into  his  sermons  his  utmost  intellectual 
force.  The  entire  community  were  present,  constituting 
a  congregation  hardly  to  be  equalled  now  for  its  high  aver- 
age of  critical  intelligence :  trained  to  acute  and  rugged 
thinking  by  their  habit  of  grappling  day  by  day  with  the 
most  difficult  problems  in  theology ;  fond  of  subtile  met- 
aphysical distinctions ;  fond  of  system,  minuteness,  and 
completeness  of  treatment ;  not  bringing  to  church  any 

1  J.  L.  Sibley,  "  Harv.  Grad."  566. 

8  J.  Winthrop,  "  Hist.  N.  E."  I.  366.  This  was  the  length  of  Hooker's 
•ermon  at  a  time  when  he  was  ill ;  the  historian  does  not  state  how  long  he 
would  have  preached  had  his  health  been  as  good  as  usual. 

!  "  Simple  Cobbler  of  Agawam,"  91.  Many  early  religious  customs  in  New 
England  are  recorded  in  Thomas  Lechford,  "Plain  Dealing, or  News  from 
New  England,"  London,  1642 :  a  book  well  described  by  its  author  as 
"  these  confused  papers,"  160. 


PREA  CHING  IN  NE  W  ENGLAND.  \  g  i 

moods  of  listlessness  or  flippancy ;  not  expecting  to  find 
there  mental  diversion,  or  mental  repose ;  but  going  there 
with  their  minds  aroused  for  strenuous  and  robust  work, 
and  demanding  from  the  preacher  solid  thought,  not  gushes 
of  sentiment,  not  torrents  of  eloquent  sound.  Then,  too, 
there  was  time  enough  for  the  preacher  to  move  upon  his 
subject  carefully,  and  to  turn  himself  about  in  it,  and  to 
develop  the  resources  of  it  amply,  to  his  mind's  content, 
hour  by  hour,  in  perfect  assurance  that  his  congregation 
would  not  desert  him  either  by  going  out  or  by  going  to 
sleep.  Moreover,  if  a  single  discourse,  even  on  the  vast 
scale  of  a  Puritan  pulpit-performance,  were  not  enough  to 
enable  him  to  give  full  statement  to  his  topic,  he  was  at 
liberty,  according  to  a  favorite  usage  in  those  days,  to  re- 
sume and  continue  the  topic  week  by  week,  and  month  by 
month,  in  orderly  sequence ;  thus,  after  the  manner  of  a 
professor  of  theology,  traversing  with  minute  care  and 
triumphant  completeness  the  several  great  realms  of  his 
science.  If  the  methods  of  the  preacher  resembled  those 
of  a  theological  professor,  it  may  be  added  that  his  con- 
gregation likewise  had  the  appearance  of  an  assemblage  of 
theological  students ;  since  it  was  customary  for  nearly 
every  one  to  bring  his  note-book  to  church,  and  to  write 
in  it  diligently  as  much  of  the  sermon  as  he  could  take 
down.  They  had  no  newspapers,  no  theatres,  no  miscel- 
laneous lectures,  no  entertainments  of  secular  music  or  of 
secular  oratory,  none  of  the  genial  distractions  of  our 
modern  life  :  the  place  of  all  these  was  filled  by  the  sermon. 
The  sermon  was  without  a  competitor  in  the  eye  or  mind 
of  the  community.  It  was  the  central  and  commanding 
incident  in  their  lives ;  the  one  stately  spectacle  for  all 
men  and  all  women  year  after  year ;  the  grandest  matter 
of  anticipation  or  of  memory ;  the  theme  for  hot  disputes 
on  which  all  New  England  would  take  sides,  and  which 
would  seem  sometimes  to  shake  the  world  to  its  centre. 
Thus  were  the  preachers  held  to  a  high  standard  of  intel- 
lectual work.  Hardly  anything  was  lacking  that  could 


1 92  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

incite  a  strong  man  to  do  his  best  continually,  to  the 
end  of  his  days  ;  and  into  the  function  of  preaching,  the 
supreme  function  at  that  time  in  popular  homage  and  in- 
fluence, the  strongest  men  were  drawn.  Their  pastorships 
were  usually  for  life ;  and  no  man  could  long  satisfy  such 
listeners,  or  fail  soon  to  talk  himself  empty  in  their  pres- 
ence, who  did  not  toil  mightily  in  reading  and  in  thinking, 
pouring  ideas  into  his  mind  even  faster  than  he  poured 
them  out  of  it. 

Without  doubt,  the  sermons  produced  in  New  England 
during  the  colonial  times,  and  especially  during  the  sev- 
enteenth century,  are  the  most  authentic  and  character- 
istic revelations  of  the  mind  of  New  England  for  all  that 
wonderful  epoch.  They  are  commonly  spoken  of  mirth- 
fully by  an  age  that  lacks  the  faith  of  that  period,  its 
earnestness,  its  grip,  its  mental  robustness  ;  a  grinning  and 
a  flabby  age,  an  age  hating  effort,  and  requiring  to  be 
amused.  The  theological  and  religious  writings  of  early 
New  England  may  not  now  be  readable ;  but  they  are 
certainly  not  despicable.  They  represent  an  enormous 
amount  of  subtile,  sustained,  and  sturdy  brain-power. 
They  are,  of  course,  grave,  dry,  abstruse,  dreadful ;  to  our 
debilitated  attentions  they  are  hard  to  follow  ;  in  style 
they  are  often  uncouth  and  ponderous ;  they  are  technical 
in  the  extreme ;  they  are  devoted  to  a  theology  that  yet 
lingers  in  the  memory  of  mankind  only  through  certain 
shells  of  words  long  since  emptied  of  their  original  mean- 
ing. Nevertheless,  these  writings  are  monuments  of  vast 
learning,  and  of  a  stupendous  intellectual  energy  both  in 
the  men  who  produced  them  and  in  the  men  who  listened 
to  them.  Of  course  they  can  never  be  recalled  to  any 
vital  human  interest.  They  have  long  since  done  their 
work  in  moving  the  minds  of  men.  Few  of  them  can  be 
cited  as  literature.  In  the  mass,  they  can  only  be  labelled 
by  the  antiquarians  and  laid  away  upon  shelves  to  be 
looked  at  occasionally  as  curiosities  of  verbal  expression, 
and  as  relics  of  an  intellectual  condition  gone  forever. 


THOMAS  HOOKER.  !95 

They  were  conceived  by  noble  minds  ;  they  are  themselves 
noble.  They  are  superior  to  our  jests.  We  may  deride 
them,  if  we  will ;  but  they  are  not  derided. 

II. 

Of  all  the  great  preachers  who  came  to  New  England  in 
our  first  age,  there  were  three  who,  according  to  the  uni- 
versal opinion  of  their  contemporaries,  towered  above  all 
others, — Thomas  Hooker,  Thomas  Shepard,  John  Cotton. 
These  three  could  be  compared  with  one  another;  but 
with  them  could  be  compared  no  one  else.  They  stood 
apart,  above  rivalry,  above  envy.  In  personal  traits  they 
differed  ;  they  were  alike  in  bold  and  energetic  thinking, 
in  massiveness  of  erudition,  in  a  certain  overpowering 
personal  persuasiveness,  in  the  gift  of  fascinating  and  re- 
sistless pulpit  oratory. 

Thomas  Hooker,  though  not  the  eldest,  died  the  first, 
namely  in  1647,  aged  sixty-one.  He  had  then  been  in 
America  fourteen  years.  Before  coming  to  America  he 
had  achieved  in  England  a  brilliant,  influential,  troubled 
career.  He  was  a  graduate  of  Emmanuel  College,  Cam- 
bridge ;  taking  holy  orders,  he  was  for  some  years  a 
preacher  in  London  ;  in  1626,  being  forty  years  old,  he 
became  religious  lecturer  and  assistant  minister  in  Chelms- 
ford  ;  and  there,  if  not  before,  he  planted  himself  con- 
spicuously upon  grounds  of  non-conformity  to  several  doc- 
trines and  usages  of  the  established  church.  In  no  long 
time,  of  course,  Bishop  Laud  was  upon  his  track,  storming 
with  ecclesiastical  fury.  Hooker  was  cast  out  of  the  pul- 
pit. At  once  he  set  up  a  grammar-school  near  Chelms- 
ford,  whence,  however,  once  more  the  echoes  of  his  elo- 
quent and  brave  talk  even  in  private,  reached  the  ears  of 
the  bishop.  Hooker  had  to  flee  for  his  life.  Of  course 
he  fled  to  Holland  ;  and  there  for  two  or  three  years  he 
preached  to  English  congregations  at  Delft  and  at  Rotter- 
dam. Already  many  of  his  friends  had  gone  across  the 


194 


HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 


Atlantic  to  the  great  Puritan  colony  of  Massachusetts 
Bay;  and  in  1633  he  himself  went  thither,  in  the  same 
ship  with  his  illustrious  compeer,  John  Cotton.  For  three 
years  after  his  arrival  in  New  England,  he  preached  to  the 
church  in  Cambridge  ;  and  in  1636  he  led  his  entire  flock, 
about  a  hundred  families,  westward  through  the  wilder- 
ness to  the  lovely  valley  of  the  Connecticut,  where  they 
built  the  town  of  Hartford, — a  town  which  then  seemed  to 
the  people  of  Boston  to  be  so  close  to  the  western  verge 
of  the  world  that,  as  they  used  to  say,  the  last  great  con- 
flict with  antichrist  would  certainly  take  place  there.  Of 
this  colony,  Hooker  was  priest  and  king;  and  here,  during 
the  last  eleven  years  of  his  life,  he  did  perhaps  his  best 
work,  studying  hard,  preaching  hard,  shaping  for  all  time 
the  character  of  the  community  which  he  founded,  and 
pouring  forth  in  swift  succession  through  the  press  of  Lon- 
don, those  glowing  and  powerful  religious  treatises  of  his 
which  at  once  became  classics  in  Puritan  literature.  Soon 
after  his  death,  a  noble  young  minister,  John  Higginson, 
revering  his  genius,  went  through  the  toil  of  copying  two 
hundred  of  Hooker's  sermons,  and  sent  them  to  England 
for  publication.  There,  under  various  titles,  about  one 
half  of  them  were  printed.  In  1830,  one  hundred  and 
eighty-three  years  after  Hooker's  death,  the  old  parson- 
age at  Hartford  was  torn  down,  and  in  it  were  found 
large  quantities  of  manuscripts,  supposed  to  have  been 
his.  What  they  were,  we  know  not.  They  may  have  con- 
tained letters,  diaries,  and  other  invaluable  personal  and 
historical  memoranda  ;  but  there  happened  to  be  no  one 
then  in  the  city  which  Hooker  founded,  to  give  shelter  to 
these  venerable  treasures,  and  to  save  them  from  the  doom 
of  being  thrown  into  the  Connecticut  River. 

In  the  living  presence  of  Hooker  there  appears  to  have 
been  some  singular  personal  force,  an  air  both  of  saintli- 
ness  and  kingliness,  that  lofty  and  invincible  moral  genius 
which  the  Hebrew  prophets  had,  and  with  which  they  capti- 
vated or  smote  down  human  resistance.  Even  during  his 


THOMAS  HOOKER. 


'95 


life-time  and  shortly  afterward,  there  gathered  about  him 
the  halo  of  spiritual  mystery,  a  sort  of  supernatural  pres- 
tige, anecdotes  of  weird  achievement  that  in  a  darker 
age  would  have  blossomed  into  frank  and  vivid  legends  of 
miraculous  power.  In  his  youth  there  was  noticed  in  him 
"  a  grandeur  of  mind  "  that  marked  him  out  for  something 
uncommon.  As  he  came  on  into  manhood,  his  person  and 
bearing  partook  of  peculiar  majesty ;  the  imperial  dignity 
of  his  office  made  him  imperial.  "  He  was  a  person," 
they  said,  "  who  when  he  was  doing  his  Master's  work, 
would  put  a  king  into  his  pocket."  People,  seeing  how 
fiery  was  his  temper,  marvelled  at  his  perfect  command  of 
it :  he  governed  it  as  a  man  governs  a  mastiff  with  a  chain  ; 
"  he  could  let  out  his  dog,"  they  said,  "  and  pull  in  his  dog 
as  he  pleased." l  As  he  ruled  himself,  so  he  ruled  other 
men,  easily ;  they  felt  his  right  to  command  them.  In 
his  school  near  Chelmsford,  a  word  or  a  look  from  him 
was  all  the  discipline  that  was  needed.  His  real  throne 
was  the  pulpit.  There  he  swayed  men  with  a  power  that 
was  more  than  regal.  His  face  had  authority  and  utter- 
ance in  it  ;  his  voice  was  rich,  of  great  compass  and  flexi- 
bility ;  every  motion  of  him  spoke.  The  impressiveness 
of  his  preaching  began  in  his  vivacity ;  he  flashed  life  into 
any  subject,  no  matter  how  dead  before.  He  so  grappled 
the  minds  of  his  hearers  that  they  could  not  get  away  from 
him.  While  he  preached  at  Chelmsford,  an  ungodly  per- 
son once  said  to  his  companions:  "Come,  let  us  go  hear 
what  that  bawling  Hooker  will  say  to  us."  The  mocker 
went ;  but  he  was  no  longer  a  mocker.  Hooker  had  that 
to  say  to  him  which  subdued  him  :  he  became  a  penitent 
and  devout  man,  and  followed  his  conqueror  to  America.* 
Once  Hooker  was  to  preach  in  the  great  church  at  Leices- 
ter. A  leading  burgess  of  the  town,  hating  the  preacher 
and  thinking  to  suppress  him,  hired  fiddlers  to  stand  near 
the  church  door  and  fiddle  while  Hooker  should  preach; 

1  "  Magnolia,"  I.  345.  '  Ibid.  I.  337- 


igQ  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

but  somehow  Hooker's  preaching  was  mightier  and  more 
musical  than  the  fiddlers'  fiddling.  The  burgess,  astonished 
at  such  power,  then  went  near  to  the  door  to  hear  for 
himself  what  sort  of  talking  that  was  which  kept  people 
from  noticing  his  fiddlers  ;  soon  even  he  was  clutched 
by  the  magnetism  of  the  orator,  sucked  in  through  the 
door  in  spite  of  himself,  smitten  down  by  stroke  after 
stroke  of  eloquent  truth,  and  converted.  Hooker's  person- 
ality had  in  it  something  which  made  it  easy  for  his  dis- 
ciples to  think,  that  the  Almighty  would  require  even  the 
forces  of  nature  to  pay  considerable  deference  to  so  won- 
derful a  man.  On  his  flight  toward  the  sea-side,  as  he  was 
escaping  to  Holland,  an  attendant,  knowing  that  an  officer 
was  in  full  chase  not  far  behind,  said  anxiously :  "  Sir, 
what  if  the  wind  should  not  be  fair  when  you  come  to 
the  vessel?"  "Brother,  let  us  leave  that  with  Him  who 
keeps  the  wind  in  the  hollow  of  his  hand."  And  they 
noticed  that,  though  the  wind  was  against  them  before 
Hooker  reached  the  vessel,  as  soon  as  he  got  aboard  "  it 
immediately  came  about  fair  and  fresh,"  and  swept  the 
ship  out  to  sea  just  in  time  to  leave  his  pursuer  pant- 
ing and  baffled  upon  the  shore.1  Hooker,  like  many 
another  strong  man,  seems  to  have  had  a  Caesarean  faith 
in  himself  and  his  fortunes.  On  the  voyage  to  Holland 
the  vessel  struck  by  night  upon  the  sands.  A  panic  ran 
through  the  ship.  Hooker,  though  unknown  to  them,  by 
sheer  force  of  personal  greatness,  restored  them  to  quiet : 
he  just  told  them  not  to  be  frightened ;  that  they  should 
surely  be  preserved.2  They  had  to  believe  the  man  who 
could  say  that.  Multitudes  of  his  contemporaries  sup- 
posed him  to  have  the  gift  of  prophecy.  He  himself  as- 
sumed to  have  it.  Long  before  the  civil  war  in  England 
he  said  openly  in  a  sermon :  "  It  has  been  told  me  from 
God,  that  God  will  destroy  England,  and  lay  it  waste,  and 
that  the  people  shall  be  put  unto  the  sword,  and  the  tem- 

1  "Magnalia,"  I.  338.  »  Ibid. 


THOMAS  HOOKER. 


I97 


pies  burnt,  and  many  houses  laid  in  ashes.'  l  When  this 
man  prayed,  they  noticed  that  there  was  some  very  strange 
power  in  it.  "  His  prayer,"  says  Cotton  Mather,  "  was  usual- 
ly like  Jacob's  ladder,  wherein  the  nearer  he  came  to  an 
end,  the  nearer  he  drew  towards  heaven." 3  Such  pray- 
ing as  his,  they  were  sure,  God  would  take  particular  notice 
of.  Once  during  a  war  between  the  weak  Mohegans,  who 
were  our  friends,  and  the  strong  Narragansetts,  who  were 
our  enemies,  this  holy  man  prayed  strenuously  against  the 
Narragansetts.  "  And  the  effect  of  it  was,"  says  the  his- 
torian, "  that  the  Narragansetts  received  a  wonderful  over- 
throw from  the  Mohegans."8 

Every  Monday  was  set  apart  by  him  as  a  day  for  private 
consultation  upon  cases  of  conscience.  It  was  simply  an 
involuntary  Protestant  confessional,  born  of  the  great  need 
people  had  to  tell  their  secrets  to  this  particular  man  ;  and 
all  sorts  of  perturbed  beings  came,  and  laid  their  spiritual 
maladies  before  him,  and  were  comforted. 

It  is  not  to  be  supposed  that,  at  the  close  of  a  life  into 
which  so  many  marvellous  things  had  entered,  death  would 
come  unheralded  by  supernatural  tokens.  On  the  last 
Sunday  of  his  life,  when  he  preached  and  administered 
the  Lord's  Supper,  "  some  of  his  most  observant  hearers  " 
perceived  "  an  astonishing  sort  of  a  cloud  "  in  the  room, 
and  among  themselves  "  a  most  unaccountable  heaviness 
and  sleepiness  .  .  .  not  unlike  the  drowsiness  of  the  dis- 
ciples when  our  Lord  was  going  to  die."  In  a  few  days 
the  mystery  was  explained.  After  a  short  illness,  "  at  last 
he  closed  his  own  eyes  with  his  own  hands,  and  gently 
stroking  his  own  forehead,  with  a  smile  in  his  counte- 
nance, he  gave  a  little  groan,  and  so  expired  his  soul  into 
the  arms  of  his  fellow-servants,  the  holy  angels." 4 

From  all  the  communities  of  New  England  a  wail  of 
grief  went  up  at  the  tidings  of  his  death :  this  was  the 
first  one  of  their  mighty  leaders  that  had  fallen  in  the 

1  "  Magnalia,"  I.  341.          •  Ibid.  344.          s  Ibid.  344.  «  Ibid.  35°. 


198 


HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITER  A  TURE. 


wilderness.     One  writer  mourned  him  in  a  Latin  elegy, 
two  lines  of  which  have  this  sense  in  English : 

"  The  thought  will  come  when  o'er  him  thus  we  moan, 
That  in  his  grave  New  England  finds  her  own." ' 

One  of  his  clerical  brethren,  Peter  Bulkley,  contenting 
himself  with  English  verse,  thus  celebrated  Hooker's  traits 
as  a  preacher: 

"  To  mind  he  gave  light  of  intelligence, 
And  searched  the  corners  of  the  conscience. 
To  sinners  stout,  which  no  law  could  bring  under, 
To  them,  he  was  a  son  of  dreadful  thunder, 
When  all  strong  oaks  of  Bashan  used  to  quake, 
And  fear  did  Libanus  his  cedars  shake. 
The  stoutest  hearts  he  filled  full  of  fears  ; 
He  clave  the  rocks,  they  melted  into  tears; 
Yet  to  sad  souls,  with  sense  of  sin  cast  down, 
He  was  a  son  of  consolation."2 

His  great  contemporary,  John  Cotton,  saluted  him  with 
tender  congratulation  : 

"  Now,  blessed  Hooker,  thou  art  set  on  high, 
Above  the  thankless  world  and  cloudy  sky  ; 
Do  thou  of  all  thy  labor  reap  the  crown, 
Whilst  we  here  reap  the  seed  which  thou  hast  sown."* 

Finally,  the  process  of  Protestant  canonization  was  com- 
pleted some  time  afterward,  when  one  writer  gave  expres- 
sion to  the  general  belief,  by  calling  him  "  Saint  Hooker." 

The  published  writings  of  Thomas  Hooker  number 
twenty-three  titles.4  Many  of  them  are  large  treatises; 
all  of  them  are  on  matters  of  theology,  church-polity,  or 
religious  life.  A  noted  English  preacher  of  that  age  said, 

1  "  Morte  tua  infandum  cogor  renovare  dolorem  Quippe  tua  videat  terra 
Nov-Angla  suam."  This  Latin  poem,  which  was  by  Elijah  Corlet,  of  Cam- 
bridge, is  given  by  Mather,  "  Magnalia,"  I.  351. 

1  Morton,  "  New  England's  Memorial,"  240.  3  Ibid.  238-239. 

4  A  list  of  them  is  given  in  E.  W.  Hooker's  "  Life  of  T.  Hooker,"  172-175; 
also  in  Sprague,  "  Annals  of  Am.  Pulpit,"  I.  36. 


THOMAS  HOOKER. 


199 


that  to  praise  the  writings  of  Hooker  would  be  "  to  lay 
paint  upon  burnished  marble,  or  add  light  unto  the  sun." l 
This  of  course  is  the  rapture  of  contemporaneous  enthusi- 
asm ;  and  yet  even  for  us  there  remains  in  Hooker's  words 
a  genuine  vitality,  the  charm  of  clearness,  earnestness, 
reality,  strength.  Remembering  what  the  man  was,  who 
once  stood  behind  these  words,  we  cannot  much  wonder 
at  the  effects  produced  by  them.  He  has  many  of  the 
traits  common  to  the  Puritan  writers  of  his  time  :  minute 
and  multitudinous  divisions  and  subdivisions ;  the  anato- 
my of  his  discourse  exposed  on  the  outside  of  it ;  a  formal 
announcement  of  doctrine,  proofs,  sequences,  applications ; 
showers  of  quotation  from  Scripture.  He  has  also  some 
exceptional  literary  advantages:  a  copious  and  racy  vo- 
cabulary ;  an  aptitude  for  strong  verbal  combinations ; 
dramatic  spirit ;  the  gift  of  translating  arguments  into 
pictures ;  cumulative  energy,  oratorical  verve.  This  orator 
is  dead  :  his  words  after  all  are  not  dead. 

What  he  wrote  is  literature  meant  for  the  ear,  not  the 
eye;  having  the  rhythm  and  cadence  of  a  good  speech. 
It  is  constructed  for  swift  practical  effect  on  the  minds, 
passions,  resolutions  of  men.  Its  lines  of  thought  are 
straight,  rugged,  bold  ;  its  movement  is  like  the  unhesi- 
tating tramp  of  an  advancing  army  ;  it  quite  omits  the 
graces  of  reserve,  the  dallying  and  tenderness  of  literary 
implication.  \Vc  are  apt  to  startle  at  the  blunt  integrity  of 
his  speech.  His  theology  has  a  fierce  and  menacing  side 
to  it,  the  mention  of  which  he  takes  no  pains  to  conceal 
from  ears  polite.  He  uses  frankly  all  the  stern  and  hag- 
gard words  of  his  sect.  He  awards  punishment  to  sinners 
in  good,  round,  English  curses,  that  are  plain  and  fructify- 
ing. He  assures  them  of  damnation  right  heartily.  His 
pages  gleam  and  blaze  with  the  flashes  of  threatened  hell- 
fire.  His  ink  has  even  yet  a  smell  of  theological  sulphur 
in  it. 

'  Allen,  "  Biog.  Diet."  Art.  T.  Hooker. 


20Q  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITER  A  TURE. 

It  was  one  part  of  his  duty,  as  he  thought,  to  "  fasten 
the  nail  of  terror  deep  into  their  hearts  ; "  l  and  in  rhetoric 
well-seasoned  for  the  use  of  "  proud  sinners  "  he  greatly  ex- 
cels :"  Do  you  think  to  out-brave  the  Almighty  ?.  .  .  Dost 
thou  think  to  go  to  heaven  thus  bolt-upright  ?  The  Lord 
cannot  endure  thee  here,  and  will  he  suffer  thee  to  dwell 
with  himself  forever  in  heaven  ?  What,  thou  to  heaven 
upon  these  terms  ?  Nay,  .  .  .  how  did  the  Lord  deal 
with  Lucifer  and  all  those  glorious  spirits?  He  sent  them 
all  down  to  hell  for  their  pride."2  "The  Lord  comes  out 
in  battle  array  against  a  proud  person,  and  singles  him  out 
from  all  the  rest,  and  .  .  .  saith,  '  Let  that  drunkard  and 
that  swearer  alone  a  while,  but  let  me  destroy  that  proud 
heart  forever.  You  shall  submit  in  spite  of  your  teeth, 
when  the  great  God  of  heaven  and  earth  shall  come  to 
execute  vengeance."8  "There  must  be  subjection  or  else 
confusion.  Will  you  out-brave  the  Almighty  to  his  face, 
and  will  you  dare  damnation  ?  .  .  .  As  proud  as  you,  have 
been  crushed  and  humbled.  Where  are  all  those  Nimrods, 
and  Pharaohs,  and  all  those  mighty  monarchs  of  the  world  ? 
The  Lord  hath  thrown  them  flat  upon  their  backs,  and 
they  are  in  hell  this  day."  4 

He  gives  sinners  to  understand,  also,  that  the  hell-tor- 
ments which  await  them  are  none  of  those  metaphorical 
and  altogether  tolerable  hell-torments  that  are  now  usually 
signified  by  that  term:  "Judge  the  torments  of  hell  by 
some  little  beginning  of  it,  and  the  dregs  of  the  Lord's 
vengeance  by  some  little  sips  of  it ;  and  judge  how  unable 
thou  art  to  bear  the  whole,  by  thy  inability  to  bear  a  lit- 
tle of  it.  .  .  .  When  God  lays  the  flashes  of  hell-fire  upon 
thy  soul,  thou  canst  not  endure  it.  ...  When  the  Lord 
hath  let  in  a  little  horror  of  heart  into  the  soul  of  a  poor 
sinful  creature,  how  he  is  transported  with  an  insupporta- 
ble burden  .  .  .  roaring  and  yelling  as  if  he  were  in  hell 


1  "  Effectual  Calling,"  43.  *  "  The  Soul's  Humiliation,"  92. 

•  Ibid.  94.  «  Ibid.  223. 


THOMAS  HOOKER.  2O1 

already.  ...  If  the  drops  be  so  heavy,  what  will  the  whole 
sea  of  God's  vengeance  be  ?  "  ' 

The  doctrine  of  the  total  depravity  of  man  lay  in  his 
mind  under  a  light  of  absolute  certainty ;  and  in  com- 
mending this  doctrine  to  his  congregations,  he  did  not  dim 
it  by  any  glozing  or  euphemistic  words :  "  Thou  art  dead 
in  trespasses  and  sins.  What  is  that  ?  A  man  is  wholly 
possessed  with  a  body  of  corruption,  and  the  spawn  of 
all  abomination  hath  overspread  the  whole  man.  .  .  .  All 
noisome  lusts  abound  in  the  soul,  and  take  possession  of 
it,  and  rule  in  it,  and  are  fed  there.  .  .  .  No  carrion  in  a 
ditch  smells  more  loathsomely  in  the  nostrils  of  man,  than 
a  natural  man's  works  do  in  the  nostrils  of  the  Almighty."8 
"  Alas,  the  devil  hath  power  over  you.  As  it  is  with  a 
dead  sheep,  all  the  carrion  crows  in  the  country  come  to 
prey  upon  it,  and  all  base  vermin  breed  and  creep  there  ; 
so  it  is  with  every  poor,  natural,  carnal  creature  under 
heaven — a  company  of  devils,  like  so  many  carrion  crows, 
prey  upon  the  heart  .  .  .  and  all  base  lusts  crawl,  and 
feed,  and  are  maintained  in  such  a  wretched  heart."  * 

His  speech  is  vigorous  in  denunciation  of  religious  for- 
malism. He  tells  them  that  the  outward  duties  are  im- 
portant, but  that  these  without  Christ  cannot  save  any 
one.  Forms  are  but  the  bucket ;  Christ  is  the  well :  "  If 
you  say  your  bucket  shall  help  you,  you  may  starve  for 
thirst  if  you  let  it  not  down  into  the  well  for  water ;  so, 
though  you  brag  of  your  praying,  and  hearing,  and  fast- 
ing, and  of  your  alms,  and  building  of  hospitals,  and  your 
good  deeds,  if  none  of  these  bring  you  to  Christ,  you  shall 
die  for  thirst."4  "  I  do  not  dishonor  these  ordinances,  but 
I  curse  all  carnal  confidence  in  them.  .  .  .  Hell  is  full  of 
hearers,  and  dissemblers,  and  carnal  wretches  that  never 
had  hearts  to  seek  unto  Christ  in  these  duties,  and  to  see 
the  value  of  a  Saviour  in  them."5 


'  E.  W.  Hooker's  •«  Life  of  T.  Hooker,"  206-7. 

•  "  The  Soul's  Humiliation,"  33-34.      »  Ibid.  37.      •  Ibid.  II.      *  Ibid.  iS 


202  HISTOR  Y  OF  A  M  ERICA  N  LITER  A  TURE. 

As  outward  forms  of  piety  cannot  save  the  sinner,  neither 
can  ministers  of  the  gospel,  potent  as  they  are,  save  him : 
"  Dost  thou  think  that  a  few  faint  prayers,  and  lazy  wishes, 
and  a  little  horror  of  heart,  can  pluck  a  dead  man  from  the 
grave  of  his  sins,  and  a  damned  soul  from  the  pit  of  hell, 
and  change  the  nature  of  a  devil  to  be  a  saint  ?  No,  it  is 
not  possible.  .  .  .  We  are  as  able  to  make  worlds,  and  to 
pull  hell  in  pieces,  as  to  pull  a  poor  soul  from  the  paw  of 
the  devil."1  "  Should  you  pray  till  you  can  speak  no 
more ;  and  should  you  sigh  to  the  breaking  of  your  loins  ; 
should  every  word  be  a  sigh,  and  every  sigh  a  tear,  and 
every  tear  a  drop  of  blood,  you  would  never  be  able  to 
recover  that  grace  which  you  lost  in  Adam."2 

As  he  passes  thus  from  realm  to  realm  in  the  vast  empire 
of  Christian  persuasion,  he  reaches  at  times  those  which 
appeal  to  nobler  passions  than  terror  or  shame ;  and  when 
he  will,  he  can  make  a  most  gallant  spiritual  charge,  and 
carry  for  his  Master  the  batteries  of  self-respect,  magna- 
nimity, honor  :  "  Christ  must  needs  take  this  unkindly  that 
you  should  give  the  devil  the  flower  of  your  age,  and  give  to 
Christ  but  the  decrepit  and  infirm  parts  of  your  lives  ;  that 
the  devil  should  suck  out  the  marrow  of  your  youth,  and 
only  give  God  the  dry  bones,  a  palsy  head,  a  dim  eye,  a 
weak  body."8 

He  depicts  dramatically,  and  with  a  soothing  tenderness, 
the  struggle  of  the  soul  to  find  its  way  to  Christ  and  to  be 
saved  :  "  When  a  poor  travelling  man  comes  to  the  ferry, 
he  cries  to  the  other  side,  '  Have  over  !  have  over ! '  His 
meaning  is  he  would  go  to  the  other  side  by  a  boat.  .  .  . 
So  Christ  is  in  heaven  ;  but  we  are  here  on  earth  ...  on 
the  other  side  of  the  river.  The  ordinances  of  God  are 
but  as  so  many  boats  to  carry  us  and  to  land  us  at  heaven 
where  our  hopes  are,  and  our  hearts  should  be.  ... 
*  Have  over !  have  over  ! '  saith  the  soul.  The  soul  desires 


1  The  Soul's  Humiliation,"  37. 

'  Effectual  Calling,"  15.  '  Ibid.  7(X 


THOMAS  HOOKER. 


203 


to  be  landed  at  the  stairs  of  mercy,  and  saith,  '  Oh,  bring 
me  to  speak  with  my  Saviour.'  "* 

He  tells  them  that  if  they  have  found  Christ  and  have 
received  his  gifts,  then  are  they  rich  with  treasures  out- 
shining all  the  world's  riches:  "Though  a  man  should 
beg  his  bread  from  door  to  door,  if  he  can  beg  Christ  and 
have  it,  and  beg  grace  and  have  it,  he  is  the  richest  man 
upon  earth."1 

He  points  out  the  true  method  of  success  in  the  Chris- 
tian life,  warning  them,  for  example,  against  idleness,  and 
against  impatience :  "  Whilst  the  stream  keeps  running, 
it  keeps  clear ;  but  let  it  stand  still,  it  breeds  frogs  and 
toads  and  all  manner  of  filth.  So  while  you  keep  going, 
you  keep  clear;  but  do  but  once  flag  in  your  diligence, 
and  stand  still,  and  oh  !  what  a  puddle  of  filth  and  sin 
thy  heart  will  be."  *  "  We  must  wait  God's  leisure,  and 
stay  his  time  for  the  bestowing  of  his  favors.  Beggars 
must  not  be  choosers."  4 

He  seeks  to  draw  them  to  the  higher  spiritual  life  by 
the  imagery  of  love  and  utmost  tenderness :  "  Let  us  be 
led  by  all  means  into  a  nearer  union  with  the  Lord  Christ. 
As  a  wife  deals  with  the  letters  of  her  husband  that  is  in 
a  far  country,  she  finds  many  sweet  inklings  of  his  love, 
and  she  will  read  these  letters  often  and  daily,  .  .  .  be- 
cause she  would  be  with  her  husband  a  little,  and  have  a 
little  parley  with  him  in  his  pen,  though  not  in  his  pres- 
ence ;  so  these  ordinances  are  but  the  Lord's  love-letters, 
and  we  arc  the  ambassadors  of  Christ,  and  ...  we  bring 
marvellous  good  news  that  Christ  can  save  all  poor  broken- 
hearted sinners  in  the  world."' 

He  assures  them  that  in  the  grace  of  utter  resigna- 
tion they  touch  the  very  essence  of  felicity  and  victory : 
"  Be  content  to  want  what  God  will  deny,  and  to  wait 
God's  good  pleasure,  and  to  be  at  his  disposing.  .  .  What- 

1  "  The  Soul's  Humiliation,"  75.      •  "  Effectual  Calling,"  76.     »  Ibid.  15 
4  "  Christ's  Last  Prayer,"  98.  •  "  The  Soul's  Humiliation.  *  73-74. 


204  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

soever  can  or  shall  befall  you  by  the  devil  and  his  instru. 
ments,  and  if  every  spire  of  grass  were  a  devil,  be  humbled, 
and  then  be  above  all  the  devils  in  hell,  and  all  tempta- 
tions, and  oppositions."1  "God  hath  but  two  thrones; 
and  the  humble  heart  is  one."2  "An  humble  soul,  a 
poor  soul,  a  very  beggar  at  the  gate  of  mercy,  the  Lord 
will  not  only  know  him,  .  .  .  but  he  will  give  him  such  a 
gracious  look  as  shall  make  his  heart  dance  in  his  breast. 
Thou  poor  humbled  soul,  the  Lord  will  give  thee  a  glimpse 
of  his  favor,  when  thou  art  tried  in  thy  trouble ;  and  when 
thou  1'ookest  up  to  heaven,  the  Lord  will  look  down  upon 
thee."  8  "  Men,  brethren,  and  fathers,  if  there  be  any  soul 
here  that  is  content  in  truth  and  sincerity  to  be  humbled, 
and  to  be  at  God's  disposing,  ...  do  not  you  make  too 
much  haste  to  go  to  heaven ;  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ  will 
come  down  from  heaven  and  dwell  in  your  hearts."4  "  In 
thy  distempers  be  humbled  and  yet  comforted :  Christ 
hath  overcome  the  power  of  them.  They  may  plague 
thee :  they  shall  not  prevail  against  thee.  .  .  .  The  power 
of  Christ's  prayer  will  outlive  thy  life,  and  the  life  of  thy 
sins,  and  set  heaven's  gates  open  before  thee."5  "It  is 
with  the  soul  in  this  case  as  it  is  with  a  mariner ;  though 
his  hand  be  upon  the  oar,  yet  he  ever  looks  homeward  to 
the  haven  where  he  would  be." 6 

III. 

New  England  has  perhaps  never  quite  appreciated  its 
great  obligations  to  Archbishop  Laud.  It  was  his  over- 
mastering hate  of  non-conformity,  it  was  the  vigilance  and 
vigor  and  consecrated  cruelty  with  which  he  scoured  his 
own  diocese  and  afterward  all  England,  and  hunted  down 
and  hunted  out  the  ministers  who  were  committing  the 
unpardonable  sin  of  dissent,  that  conferred  upon  the  prin- 

1  "  The  Soul's  Humiliation,"  144-145.          *  Ibid.  213. 
8  Ibid.  214-215.  4  Ibid.  220. 

6  "  Christ's  Last  Prayer,"  203.  •  "  The  Soul's  Humiliation,"  69, 


THOMAS  SHEPARD.  205 

cipal  colonies  of  New  England  their  ablest  and  noblest 
men.  Indeed,  without  Laud,  those  principal  colonies  would 
perhaps  never  have  had  an  existence.  His  dreadful  name 
is  linked  to  our  early  story  by  sickening  memories  of  ter- 
ror and  brutal  insult  and  grief,  of  darkened  fire-sides,  of 
foul  prisons  opened  to  receive  saints  instead  of  felons,  of 
delicate  women  and  little  children  set  adrift  in  the  world 
without  shelter  or  protector ;  of  good  men — scholars,  apos- 
tles— fleeing  for  their  lives,  under  masks,  under  false  names, 
skulking  in  the  guise  of  criminals,  from  the  land  they  were 
born  in. 

The  short  and  easy  way  with  dissenters  that  Laud 
adopted,  is  happily  shown  in  his  treatment  of  Thomas 
Shepard.  In  the  year  1630,  this  gifted  and  consecrated 
man,  then  twenty-five  years  old,  a  graduate  of  Emmanuel 
College,  Cambridge,  and  admitted  to  holy  orders  by  the 
bishop  of  Peterborough,  was  preaching  in  the  little  town  of 
Earles-Colne,  in  Essex.  The  odor  of  his  Puritanical  piety 
had  reached  the  nostrils  of  Laud,  then  bishop  of  London. 
On  the  sixteenth  of  December,  of  the  year  just  named, 
at  about  eight  o'clock  in  the  morning,  the  poor  parson, 
in  obedience  to  a  citation,  presented  himself  before  the 
face  of  the  bishop  in  his  palace  in  the  great  city.  Of  the 
vivacious  conversation  that  then  ensued,  the  parson  him- 
self has  left  us  a  narrative. !  "  As  soon  as  I  came,  .  .  . 
falling  into  a  fit  of  rage  he  asked  me  what  degree  I  had 
taken  in  the  university.  I  answered  him,  I  was  a  Master 
of  Arts.  He  asked,  of  what  college  ?  I  answered,  of  Em- 
manuel. He  asked,  how  long  I  had  lived  in  his  diocese. 
I  answered,  three  years  and  upwards.  He  asked,  who 
maintained  me  all  this  while,  charging  me  to  deal  plainly 
with  him ;  adding  withal  that  he  had  been  more  cheated 
and  equivocated  with  by  some  of  my  malignant  faction 
than  ever  was  man  by  Jesuit.  At  the  speaking  of  which 

1  "  First  printed  from  Shepard's  manuscript,  by  Thomas  Prince,  "Chron. 
Hist.  N.  E."  I.  338;  and  reprinted  in  Young, "  Chron.  Mass.  Bay,"  518- 
520. 


2O6  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

words  he  looked  as  though  blood  would  have  gushed  out 
of  his  face,  and  did  shake  as  if  he  had  been  haunted  with 
an  ague  fit,  to  my  apprehension,  by  reason  of  his  extreme 
malice  and  secret  venom.  I  desired  him  to  excuse  me. 
He  fell  then  to  threaten  me,  and  withal  to  bitter  railing, 
.  .  .  saying, '  You  prating  coxcomb,  do  you  think  all  the 
learning  is  in  your  brain  ? '  He  pronounced  his  sentence 
thus  :  '  I  charge  you  that  you  neither  preach,  read,  marry, 
bury,  or  exercise  any  ministerial  function,  in  any  part  of 
my  diocese  ;  for  if  you  do,  and  I  hear  of  it,  I'll  be  upon 
your  back,  and  follow  you  wherever  you  go,  in  any  part  of 
the  kingdom,  and  so  everlastingly  disenable  you.'  ...  I 
prayed  him  to  suffer  me  to  catechise  in  the  Sabbath  days 
in  the  afternoon.  He  replied, '  Spare  your  breath.  I'll  have 
no  such  fellows  prate  in  my  diocese.  Get  you  gone ;  and 
now  make  your  complaints  to  whom  you  will.'  So  away  I 
went."  Very  naturally  the  young  parson  was  at  first  some- 
what dazed  by  the  Laudean  hurricane  that  had  swept 
over  him ;  and  two  days  afterward,  he  met  half  a  dozen  of 
his  clerical  brethren  who  "  consulted  together,"  as  he  tells 
us,  "  whether  it  was  best  to  let  such  a  swine  to  root  up 
God's  plants  in  Essex,  and  not  to  give  him  some  check."  l 
Unfortunately,  in  the  present  case,  the  mighty  hunters 
were  all  on  the  side  of  the  swine  ;  and  the  check  which  the 
parsons  had  hoped  to  give  to  him  was  abundantly  bestowed 
upon  themselves.  They  were  routed  and  scattered,  this 
way  and  that.  For  four  years  Thomas  Shepard  was  a  wan- 
derer in  England,  eager  to  preach  the  gospel  and  having  a 
wonderful  aptitude  that  way,  but  unable  to  find  anywhere 
in  England  a  spot  that  was  not  interdicted  to  him  by 
Laud's  unslumbering  hostility.  Accordingly,  in  1635,  re- 
solving to  put  the  ocean  between  himself  and  his  enemy, 
he  came  to  New  England  ;  and  early  in  the  following  year, 
he  took  charge  of  the  church  in  Cambridge,  and  there  re- 
mained until  his  death  in  1649. 

1  Shepard's  autobiography,  in  Young,  "  Chron.  Mass.  Bay,"  521. 


THOMAS  SHEPARD. 


207 


Even  during  his  life-time  his  fame  as  a  pulpit-orator  and 
a  writer  rose  high  in  both  Englands ;  and  it  rose  still  higher 
after  his  death.  In  person  he  had  some  disadvantages. 
He  lacked  the  bodily  vigor,  the  massive  proportions,  the 
stateliness,  of  his  two  compeers,  Thomas  Hooker  and  John 
Cotton.  His  contemporaries  describe  him  to  us  as  a  poor, 
weak,  pale-complexioned  man,  whose  physical  powers  were 
feeble  but  spent  to  the  full.  He  was  a  cloistered  student  and 
an  invalid,  recoiling  from  the  crisp  breath  of  a  New  Eng- 
land winter  ;  during  which  season,  as  he  tells  us,  there  was  a 
near  relation  between  him  and  the  fireside. l  But  his  fragile 
body  was  possessed  by  a  spirit  of  uncommon  beauty,  de- 
voutness,  and  power.  He  had  a  subtile  and  commanding 
intellect  ;  he  was  a  profound  thinker;  his  style  was  in  the 
main  clear,  terse,  abounding  in  energy,  with  frequent  flashes 
of  eloquence  ;  and  the  charm  of  his  diction  was  enhanced 
by  the  manner  of  his  speech,  which  was  almost  matchless 
for  its  sweet  and  lofty  grace,  its  pathos,  its  thrilling  inten- 
sity, its  ringing  fulness  and  force.  His  successor  in  office 
spoke  of  "  the  lively  voice  of  this  soul-melting  preacher."  * 
John  Higginson  described  him  as  one  who  was  both  "a 
Timothy  in  his  family  "  and  a  "  Chrysostom  in  the  pulpit."  * 
His  writings,  which  have  been  honored  by  a  modern  edi- 
tion,4 have  had  among  theologians  of  his  school  a  perma- 
nent reputation.  He  has  been  much  read  by  his  own  pro- 
fession. He  may  be  described  as  the  preacher's  preacher. 
His  brethren  have  paid  to  him  the  flattering  tribute  of 
lavishly  borrowing  both  his  ideas  and  his  words.  From  a 
single  one  of  Thomas  Shepard's  books,  Jonathan  Edwards, 
it  is  said,  drew  nearly  a  hundred  citations  for  his  cele- 
brated "  Treatise  concerning  Religious  Affections." 

The  theology  of  Thomas  Shepard,  of  course,  derived  its 
characteristic  features  not  from  him,  but  from  his  age  and 
his  sect :  it  was  harsh,  dark,  inexorable ;  most  sincere  in 


1  "  Clear  Sunshine  of  the  Gospel,"  8.        *  Works  of  T.  Shepard,  II.  IO. 
*  Ibid.  I.  clxxxii.  4  Three  volumes,  Boston,  1853. 


208  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

its  exaggerations  of  the  sin  fulness  of  man  and  the  wrath- 
fulness  of  God ;  placing  on  the  throne  of  the  universe  a 
stark  divine  justice,  upon  which  scarcely  fell  one  glimmer  of 
divine  pity;  copious  in  maledictions;  having  a  marvellous 
alacrity  in  making  its  consignments  of  souls  to  the  devil. 

The  doctrine,  for  example,  that  "  in  Adam's  fall  we 
sinned  all,"  is  expounded  by  this  preacher  with  a  courage 
and  a  candor  that  never  flinched  before  considerations 
either  of  humanity  or  of  common-sense :  "  We  are  all 
in  Adam,  as  a  whole  country  in  a  parliament  man  ;  the 
whole  country  doth  what  he  doth."  1  To  some,  the  felicity 
of  this  comparison  may  be  damaged  by  the  fact  that,  while 
the  country  chooses  its  parliament  man  to  stand  for  it, 
"  we  made  no  particular  choice  of  Adam  to  stand  for 
us;"2  but  the  reply  is,  that  the  choice  was  made  not  by 
us  but  on  our  behalf,  ages  before  we  were  born,  by  a 
Being  infinitely  better  and  wiser  than  we  are.  This  first 
step  being  made  secure,  every  subsequent  step  is  logical 
and  easy.  Each  man,  having  thus  fallen  into  sin  thousands 
of  ages  before  he  was  born,  finds,  on  arriving  to  take  pos- 
session of  the  existence  thus  blighted  for  him  in  advance, 
that  his  fall  is  an  exceedingly  complete  one — dragging 
down  with  itself  every  faculty  and  atom  of  his  nature. 
Nowhere  else,  perhaps,  is  the  dogma  of  total  depravity  pre- 
sented to  us  in  braver,  or  more  sprightly  limning:  "  Every 
natural  man  and  woman  is  born  full  of  all  sin,  as  full  as  a 
toad  is  of  poison,  as  full  as  ever  his  skin  can  hold  ;  mind, 
will,  eyes,  mouth,  every  limb  of  his  body,  and  every  piece 
of  his  soul,  is  full  of  sin ;  their  hearts  are  bundles  of  sin."8 
"  Thy  mind  is  a  nest  of  all  the  foul  opinions,  heresies,  that 
ever  were  vented  by  any  man ;  thy  heart  is  a  foul  sink  of 
all  atheism,  sodomy,  blasphemy,  murder,  whoredom,  adul- 
tery, witchcraft,  buggery ;  so  that  if  thou  hast  any  good 
thing  in  thee,  it  is  but  as  a  drop  of  rose-water  in  a  bowl  of 
poison.  ...  It  is  true  thou  feelest  not  all  these  things  stir, 

1  Works  of  T.  Shepard,  I.  24.  »  Ibid.  I.  24.  »  Ibid.  28. 


THOMAS  SHEPARD.  209 

ring  in  thee  at  one  time  .  .  .  ;  but  they  are  in  thee,  like  a 
nest  of  snakes  in  an  old  hedge." l 

Certainly  this  is  a  dire  condition  of  affairs ;  and  it  is  en- 
tailed upon  every  man  at  his  birth,  in  consequence  of  the 
personal  misconduct  of  an  individual,  named  Adam,  who 
lived  some  sixty  centuries  ago ;  who  was  the  moral  repre- 
sentative of  every  man,  but  who  was  chosen  as  representa- 
tive by  no  man.  And  what  is  to  be  done  about  it  ?  Is 
there  any  escape  ?  If  the  man  be  one  of  the  elect,  yes  ;  if 
he  be  not  one  of  the  elect,  no.  In  the  latter  case,  '•  God 
shall  set  himself  like  a  consuming  infinite  fire  against  thee, 
and  tread  thee  under  his  feet,  who  hast  by  sin  trod  him  and 
his  glory  under  foot  all  thy  life.  ...  I  tell  thee  all  the  wis- 
dom of  God  shall  then  be  set  against  thee  to  devise  tor- 
ments for  thee.  .  .  .  The  torment  which  wisdom  shall  de- 
vise, the  almighty  power  of  God  shall  inflict  upon  thee ;  so 
as  there  was  never  such  power  seen  in  making  the  world, 
as  in  holding  a  poor  creature  under  this  wrath,  that  holds 
up  the  soul  in  being  with  one  hand,  and  beats  it  with  the 
other;  everburning  like  fire  against  a  creature,  and  yet 
that  creature  never  burnt  up.  Think  not  this  cruelty:  it 
is  justice.  What  cares  God  for  a  vile  wretch,  whom  noth- 
ing can  make  good  while  it  lives  ?  If  we  have  been  long 
in  hewing  a  block,  and  we  can  make  no  meet  vessel  of  it, 
put  it  to  no  good  use  for  ourselves,  we  cast  it  into  the 
fire.  God  hcweth  thee  by  sermons,  sickness,  losses  and 
crosses,  sudden  death,  mercies  and  miseries,  yet  nothing 
makes  thee  better.  What  should  God  do  with  thee,  but 
cast  thee  hence?  O  consider  of  this  wrath  before  you 
feel  it.  ...  Thou  canst  not  endure  the  torments  of  a  little 
kitchen-fire,  on  the  tip  of  thy  finger,  not  one  half  hour  to- 
gether. How  wilt  thou  bear  the  fury  of  this  infinite,  end- 
less, consuming  fire,  in  body  and  soul,  throughout  all  eter- 
nity ?  "  *  "  Death  cometh  hissing  .  .  .  like  a  fiery  dragon 
with  the  sting  of  vengeance  in  the  mouth  of  it.  ...  Then 

1  Works  of  T.  Shcpard,  I.  28.  »  Ibid.  I.  42-43. 

*         14 


2  io  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

shall  God  surrender  up  thy  forsaken  soul  into  the  hands 
of  devils,  who,  being  thy  jailers,  must  keep  thee,  till  the 
great  day  of  account ;  so  that  as  thy  friends  are  scram- 
bling for  thy  goods,  and  worms  for  thy  body,  so  devils 
shall  scramble  for  thy  soul.  .  .  .  Thy  forlorn  soul  shall 
lie  moaning  for  the  time  past,  now  it  is  too  late  to  recall 
again  ;  groaning  under  the  intolerable  torments  of  the 
wrath  of  God  present,  and  amazed  at  the  eternity  of  misery 
and  sorrow  that  is  to  come  ;  waiting  for  that  fearful  hour, 
when  the  last  trump  shall  blow,  and  body  and  soul  meet 
to  bear  that  wrath, — that  fire  that  shall  never  go  out."1 


IV. 

Not  far  from  the  year  1612,  the  ancient  church  of  Saint 
Mary,  in  Cambridge,  was  filled  one  day  by  a  great  con- 
course of  persons, — under-graduates,  fellows,  professors, — 
who  had  been  attracted  thither  by  the  brilliant  reputation 
of  a  member  of  their  own  university,  a  fellow  of  Emmanuel 
College,  John  Cotton  by  name,  then  only  about  twenty- 
seven  years  old.  This  person  had  been  in  the  university 
ever  since  he  was  a  lad  of  thirteen  ;  he  had  continually 
distinguished  himself  as  a  scholar;  he  had  risen  to  be 
catechist,  head-lecturer,  and  dean  in  the  college  to  which 
he  belonged.  He  was  proficient  in  the  logic  and  philoso- 
phy then  taught  in  the  schools;  was  a  critical  master  of 
Greek ;  could  converse  fluently  either  in  Latin  or  in  He- 
brew. Beyond  all  other  things,  he  had  genius  for  oratory, 
particularly  the  oratory  of  the  pulpit.  It  was  his  extraor- 
dinary fame  in  that  direction  which  had  drawn  together 
the  great  crowd  to  hear  him  on  the  occasion  to  which 
reference  has  been  made.  Several  times  before,  he  had 
preached  in  the  presence  of  the  whole  university,  always 
carrying  off  their  applause  ;  for  he  had  never  failed  to  give 
them  the  sort  of  sermons  that  were  then  in  fashion, — 

1  Works  of  T.  Shepard,  I.  35-39. 


JOHN  conotr.  211 

learned,  ornate,  pompous,  bristling  with  epigrams,  stuffed 
with  conceits,  all  set  off  dramatically  by  posture,  gesture, 
and  voice.  Meantime,  however,  his  religious  character 
had  been  deepening  into  Puritanism.  He  had  come  to 
view  his  own  preaching  as  frivolous,  Sadducean,  pagan. 
In  preparing  once  more  to  preach  to  this  congregation  of 
worldly  and  witty  folk,  he  had  resolved  to  give  them  a 
sermon  intended  to  exhibit  Jesus  Christ,  rather  than  John 
Cotton.  This  he  did.  His  hearers  were  astonished,  dis- 
gusted. Not  a  murmur  of  applause  greeted  the  several 
stages  of  his  discourse  as  formerly.  They  pulled  their 
shovel-caps  down  over  their  faces,  folded  their  arms,  and 
sat  it  out  sullenly, — amazep^tliat  the  promising  John  Cot- 
ton had  turned  lunatic  or  Puritan. 

Evidently  there  was  stuff  in  this  man  ;  and  he  it  was 
who,  twenty  years  later,  came  over  to  New  England,  and 
acquired  there  a  marvellous  ascendency,  personal  and  pro- 
fessional,— an  ascendency  more  sovereign,  probably,  than 
any  other  American  clergyman  has  ever  reached.  The 
interval  of  twenty  years  that  fell  between  that  brave  uni- 
versity-sermon, and  his  great  career  in  New  England,  was 
by  no  means  a  blank.  In  fact  it  was  a  period  for  him 
very  rich  and  intense  in  incident.  He  left  the  university 
to  take  charge  of  the  great  church  of  St.  Botolph's,  at  Bos- 
ton, in  Lincolnshire,  and  there  he  remained  till  his  re- 
moval to  Boston,  in  New  England.  Year  by  year,  while  he 
lived  in  the  elder  Boston,  he  grew  in  knowledge  about  the 
Bible,  and  in  the  science  of  God  and  man  as  seen  through 
the  dun  goggles  of  John  Calvin;  his  singular  faculty  as 
a  preacher  greatened  every  way,  in  force  and  splendor ; 
his  fame  filled  all  the  kingdom ;  and  though  he  was  far 
from  being  a  good  churchman,  the  powerful  prelate,  Lord 
Keeper  Williams,  told  King  James  that  Cotton  was  a 
good  man  and  a  good  preacher,  and  got  from  the  king 
a  promise  that  Cotton  should  not  be  disturbed  ;  finally, 
under  the  reign  of  Charles,  the  preacher  drew  upon  him- 
self the  fatal  eye  of  Bishop  Laud.  It  was  in  1633  that 


2 1  2  HISTOR  y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

Laud  became  primate  of  England  ;  which  meant,  among 
other  things,  that  nowhere  within  the  rim  of  that  imperial 
island  was  there  to  be  peace  or  safety  any  longer  for  John 
Cotton.  Some  of  his  friends  in  high  station  tried  to  use 
persuasive  words  with  the  archbishop  on  his  behalf ;  but 
the  archbishop  brushed  aside  their  words  with  an  insup- 
portable scorn.  The  earl  of  Dorset  sent  a  message  to  Cot- 
ton, that  if  he  had  only  been  guilty  of  drunkenness,  or 
adultery,  or  any  such  minor  ministerial  offence,  his  pardon 
could  have  been  had  ;  but  since  his  crime  was  Puritanism, 
he  must  flee  for  his  life.1  So,  for  his  life  he  fled,  first  hid- 
ing himself  here  and  there  about  London,  dodging  his 
pursuers  ;  and  finally  slipping  out  of  England,  after  in- 
numerable perils,  like  a  hunted  felon ;  landing  in  Boston 
in  September,  1633. 

His  arrival  filled  the  colony  with  exceeding  joy.  It  was 
a  thing  they  had  been  praying  for.  Even  the  name  of 
Boston  had  been  given  to  their  chief  town  as  a  compli- 
ment and  an  enticement  to  him. 

14  The  lantern  of  St.  Botolph's  ceased  to  burn, 
When  from  the  portals  of  that  church  he  came 
To  be  a  burning  and  a  shining  light, 
Here  in  the  wilderness."' 

At  once,  the  most  conspicuous  pulpit  was  given  to  him ; 
and  from  that  hour  till  his  death  nineteen  years  afterward, 
he  wielded  with  strong  and  brilliant  mastership  the  fierce 
theocracy  of  New  England.  Laymen  and  clergymen  alike 
recognized  his  supremacy,  and  rejoiced  in  it.  He  was  the 
unmitred  pope  of  a  pope-hating  commonwealth.  "  I  hold 
myself  not  worthy,"  said  an  eminent  minister  of  Massa- 
chusetts, "  to  wipe  his  slippers."  8  Roger  Williams  wrote, 
evidently  with  a  subdued  smile,  that  some  people  in  Mas- 
sachusetts used  to  say  that  "  they  could  hardly  believe 

1  "  Magnalia,"  I.  263. 

1  Longfellow,  "  New  England  Tragedies,"  15. 

3  Nathaniel  Ward,  quoted  by  J.  W.  Dean,  "  Memoir  "  of  Ward,  83. 


JOHN  COTTON.  2l$ 

that  God  would  suffer  Mr.  Cotton  to  err." l  The  contem- 
porary historian,  William  Hubbard,  states  that  whatever 
John  Cotton  "delivered  in  the  pulpit  was  soon  put  into  an 
order  of  court  ...  or  set  up  as  a  practice  in  the  church."2 
Another  clergyman  of  that  day,  trying  to  utter  his  homage 
for  John  Cotton,  found  the  resources  of  prose  inadequate : 

"  A  man  of  might  at  heavenly  eloquence, 
To  fix  the  ear  and  charm  the  conscience ; 
As  if  Apollos  were  revived  in  him, 
Or  he  had  learned  of  a  seraphim. 

Rocks  rent  before  him,  blind  received  their  sight, 
Souls  levelled  to  the  dunghill  stood  upright."1 

When  in  1651,  he,  the  mightiest  man  in  New  England, 
wrote  to  Cromwell,  the  mightiest  man  in  old  England,  the 
latter  promptly  "  took  this  liberty  from  business,  to  salute" 
John  Cotton,  as  his  "  dear  friend,"  to  confess  to  him  his 
own  sense  of  unworthiness,  and  to  inform  him  of  the  prog- 
ress of  events  then  big  with  the  fulfilment  of  prophecies, 
adding,  "  We  need  your  prayers  in  this  as  much  as  ever; " 
and  closing  with  this  cordial  subscription,  "Your  affec- 
tionate friend  to  serve  you."  4 

It  was,  of  course,  rather  strange  that  the  Almighty 
should  permit  such  a  man  to  die ;  but  when  at  last  death 
did  come  to  him,  the  services  of  his  interment,  we  are 
told,  made  "  the  most  grievous  and  solemn  funeral  that 
was  ever  known  perhaps  upon  the  American  strand."* 

1  Narr.  Club  Pub.    IV.  42. 

1  Hubbard,  "Gen.  Hist.  N.  E."  182. 

*  The  whole  is  given  in  Morton,  "  New  England's  Memorial,"  254. 
'Carlyle,   "Oliver  Cromwell's  Lettets  and  Speeches"  (N.  Y.  1859),  II. 

8-10  ;  where  Carlyle  speaks  of  John  Cotton  as  "  a  painful  preacher,  oracular 
of  high  gospels  to  New  England  ;  who  in  his  day  was  well  seen  to  be  con- 
nected with  the  Supreme  Powers  of  this  universe ;  .  .  .  was  thought  espe- 
cially on  his  death-bed  to  have  manifested  gifts  even  of  prophecy — a  thing 
not  inconceivable  to  the  human  mind  that  well  considers  prophecy  and  John 
Cotton." 

•  *'  Magnalia,"  I.  273. 


214 


HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 


Nay,  it  was  commonly  believed  at  the  time,  that  even  the 
heavens  as  well  as  the  earth  took  note  of  the  dreadful 
event,  and  that  Providence  set  aflame  in  the  sky  an  indu- 
bitable signal  of  it.  "About  the  time  of  his  sickness,"  says 
the  historian,  Nathaniel  Morton,  "  there  appeared  in  the 
heavens  over  New  England  a  comet,  giving  a  dim  light ; 
and  so  waxed  dimmer  and  dimmer,  until  it  became  quite 
extinct  and  went  out  ;  which  time  of  its  being  extinct  was 
soon  after  the  time  of  the  period  of  his  life :  it  being  a 
very  signal  testimony  that  God  had  then  removed  a  bright 
star,  a  burning  and  a  shining  light  out  of  the  heaven  of  his 
church  here,  unto  celestial  glory  above."  l 

Although  John  Cotton  was  a  prolific  author,  his  place 
in  our  early  literary  history  bears  no  proportion  to  his 
place  in  our  early  religious  and  political  history.  As  a 
student,  he  was  of  the  heroic  pattern  of  the  seventeenth 
century.  A  sand-glass  which  would  run  four  hours  stood 
near  him  when  he  studied,  and  being  turned  over  three 
times,  measured  his  day's  work.  This  he  called  "  a  scholar's 
day."  Esteeming  John  Calvin  to  be  greater  than  all  the 
fathers  and  all  the  school-men,  he  was  accustomed  to  read 
in  him  last  of  all  every  evening :  "  I  love  to  sweeten  my 
mouth  with  a  piece  of  Calvin  before  I  go  to  sleep."2  His 
grandson,  Cotton  Mather,  who  upon  such  a  theme  never 
lapsed  into  an  understatement,  tells  us  that  John  Cotton 
"was  indeed  a  most  universal  scholar,  and  a  living  system 
of  the  liberal  arts,  and  a  walking  library."8 

Upon  better  testimony  we  know  that  he  certainly  had 
large  reading,  a  retentive  memory,  great  intellectual  poise, 
agility,  and  self-command,  all  his  accomplishments  and  ac- 
cumulations at  ready  call ;  while  the  character  and  range 
of  his  work  as  a  writer,  during  the  nineteen  years  of  his 
American  life,  may  be  seen  by  a  glance  over  the  mere 
titles  of  his  principal  publications :  "  The  Bloody  Tenet 


1  Morton,  "New  England's  Memorial,"  251-252. 

*  McClure,  "  Life  "  of  Cotton,  271.  8  "  Magnalia,"  I.  273. 


JOHN   COTTON.  215 

washed  and  made  white  in  the  Blood  of  the  Lamb;"  "A 
Brief  Exposition  upon  Ecclesiastes ; "  "  A  Brief  Exposi- 
tion upon  Canticles  ;  "  "  The  Covenant  of  Grace  ;  "  "  An 
Exposition  upon  the  Thirteenth  Chapter  of  the  Revela- 
tion;" "The  Grounds  and  Ends  of  the  Baptism  of  the 
Children  of  the  Faithful ; "  "  Of  the  Holiness  of  Church 
Members;"  "The  Keys  of  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven;" 
"A  Modest  and  Clear  Answer  to  Mr.  Ball's  Discourse 
of  Set  Forms  of  Prayer;"  "The  New  Covenant;"  "A 
Practical  Commentary  upon  the  First  Epistle  of  John  ;  " 
"  Spiritual  Milk  for  Babes ;  "  "A  Treatise  of  the  Covenant 
of  Grace  as  it  is  dispensed  to  the  Elect  Seed  ;  "  "  The 
Way  of  the  Congregational  Churches  Cleared  ;  "  "  The 
Way  of  Life  ;  "  "A  Treatise  concerning  Predestination."  * 

Let  us  open,  now,  any  of  these  old  books  of  John  Cot- 
ton. At  once,  the  immensity  of  his  contemporaneous  influ- 
ence becomes  a  riddle  to  us.  In  the  writings  of  his  great 
associates,  Hooker,  Shepard,  Peter  Bulkley,  William  Hooke, 
and  Charles  Chauncey,  at  least  some  threads  of  immortal 
light,  some  lingering  movements  of  a  once  glorious  energy, 
some  half-blurred  foot-prints  of  a  departed  genius,  may 
still  be  traced  by  us,  after  these  two  centuries ;  marks  of 
literary  superiority ;  quotable  passages.  The  same  can 
hardly  be  said  of  the  writings  of  John  Cotton.  These  are 
indeed  clear  and  cogent  in  reasoning ;  the  language  is  well 
enough  ;  but  that  is  all.  There  are  almost  no  remarkable 
merits  in  thought  or  style.  One  wanders  through  these 
vast  tracts  and  jungles  of  Puritanic  discourse — exposition, 
exhortation,  logic -chopping,  theological  hair-splitting — 
and  is  unrewarded  by  a  single  passage  of  eminent  force  or 
beauty,  uncheered  even  by  the  felicity  of  a  new  epithet  in 
the  objurgation  of  sinners,  or  a  new  tint  in  the  landscape- 
painting  of  hell. 

Evidently  the  vast  intellectual  and  moral  force  of  John 
Cotton  was  a  thing  that  could  not  be  handed  over  to  the 

1  The  Prince  Library  CaU  Vogue,  |*epared  by  Justin  Winsor,  17-18. 


2 1 6  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITER  A  TURE. 

printing-press  or  transmitted  to  posterity :  it  had  to  com- 
municate itself  in  the  living  presence  of  the  man  himself. 
The  traditions  of  that  living  presence  are  certainly  notable. 
He  was  of  medium  size ;  his  hair,  brown  in  early  years, 
with  advancing  time  grew  white  as  snow ;  and  "  in  his 
countenance  there  was  an  inexpressible  sort  of  majesty, 
which  commanded  reverence  from  all  that  approached 
him."  Thus  the  inn-keeper  at  Derby,  having  once  John 
Cotton  for  a  guest,  very  naturally  wished  him  gone  from 
the  house  ;  since  he  "  was  not  able  to  swear  while  that  man 
was  under  his  roof."1  His  voice  was  not  powerful,  but 
clear,  mellow,  sympathetic.  One  contemporary  says  that 
"  Mr.  Cotton  had  such  an  insinuating  and  melting  way  in 
his  preaching  that  he  would  usually  carry  his  very  adver- 
sary captive  after  the  triumphant  chariot  of  his  rhetoric."2 
But  the  chariot  of  his  rhetoric  ceased  to  be  triumphant 
when  the  master  himself  ceased  to  drive  it. 


V. 

Such  were  the  three  foremost  personages  among  the 
theological  and  religious  writers  of  New  England,  in  our 
first  literary  period.  In  the  throng  of  their  professional 
associates — scholars,  thinkers,  devotees — were  not  a  few 
others  who  did  famous  work  in  the  one  form  of  writ- 
ing that  then  suited  best  the  intellectual  appetite  of  the 
people,  and  that  still  preserves  best  the  very  form  and 
pressure  of  that  unique  time. 

One  of  these  men  was  Peter  Bulkley,  born  in  1583,  some- 
time fellow  of  St.  John's  College,  Cambridge,  a  man  of  con- 
siderable estate  and  social  position.  For  twenty-one  years 
he  was  rector  of  Woodhill,  Bedfordshire ;  but  at  last  the 
hand  of  the  terrible  archbishop  being  laid  heavily  upon 
him,  he  came  to  Cambridge,  Massachusetts,  in  1635.  The 


1  "  Magnalia,"  I.  280. 

5  W.  Hubbard,  "  Gen.  Hist.  N.  E.  "  175. 


PETER  BULK  LEY. 


217 


next  year  "  he  carried  a  good  number  of  planters  with  him 
up  further  into  the  woods,"  l  where  they  established  the 
town  of  Concord,  and  where  he  abode  as  pastor  until  his 
death  in  1659.  He  was  a  sufferer  from  bodily  pains  ;  his 
will  was  exacting,  his  temper  quick,  his  tongue  sharp ;  yet 
in  heart  and  hand  he  was  benignant  and  bountiful ;  noted 
even  among  Puritans  for  the  superlative  stiffness  of  his 
Puritanism,  his  austere  looks,  his  prim  dress,  his  incredible 
brevity  of  hair.  He  was  a  great  scholar  too ;  having,  as 
Cotton  Mather  saith,  "  a  competently  good  stroke  at  Latin 
poetry,"  *  even  down  to  old  age  blossoming  oft  into  fra- 
grant Latin  epigrams.  A  large  place  in  Puritan  literature 
was  held  by  him  in  his  life-time  and  long  afterward,  on  ac- 
count of  his  bbok,  "  The  Gospel  Covenant,  or  the  Cove- 
nant of  Grace  Opened,"  made  up  of  a  series  of  systematic 
sermons  preached  at  Concord,  first  published  in  London 
in  1646;  one  of  those  massive,  exhaustive,  ponderous  trea- 
tises into  which  the  Puritan  theologians  put  their  enor- 
mous Biblical  learning,  their  acumen,  their  industry,  the 
fervor,  pathos,  and  consecration  of  their  lives.  It  deals 
with  a  topic  which  at  that  time  stirred  the  minds  of  all  men 
in  New  England,  which  made  and  unmade  reputations, 
which  shook  the  whole  commonwealth.  The  style,  though 
angular,  sharp-edged,  carved  into  formal  divisions,  and  stiff 
with  the  embroidery  of  Scriptural  texts,  is  upon  the  whole 
direct  and  strong.  The  book  has  a  peculiar  interest  for  us 
still,  on  account  of  its  occasional  episodes  of  reference  to 
the  mighty  things  then  taking  place  in  England.  Near 
the  close  of  it,  is  this  impressive  appeal  to  the  people  of 
New  England  :  "  And  for  ourselves  here,  the  people  of 
New  England,  we  should  in  a  special  manner  labor  to 
shine  forth  in  holiness  above  other  people.  We  have  that 
plenty  ...  of  ordinances  and  means  of  grace,  as  few  peo- 
ple enjoy  the  like.  We  are  as  a  city  set  upon  an  hill,  in 
the  open  view  of  all  the  earth  ;  the  eyes  of  the  world  are 

1  "  Magnalia."  I.  400.  f  Ibid.  I.  403. 


2  1 8  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

upon  us  because  we  profess  ourselves  to  be  a  people  in 
covenant  with  God.  .  .  .  Let  us  study  so  to  walk  that  this 
may  be  our  excellency  and  dignity  among  the  nations  of 
the  world.  .  .  .  There  is  no  people  but  will  strive  to  excel 
in  something.  What  can  we  excel  in,  if  not  in  holiness  ? 
If  we  look  to  number,  we  are  the  fewest ;  if  to  strength, 
we  are  the  weakest ;  if  to  wealth  and  riches,  we  are  the 
poorest  of  all  the  people  of  God  through  the  whole  world. 
We  cannot  excel,  nor  so  much  as  equal,  other  people  in 
these  things ;  and  if  we  come  short  in  grace  and  holiness 
too,  we  are  the  most  despicable  people  under  heaven.  .  .  . 
Be  we  an  holy  people,  so  shall  we  be  honorable  before 
God,  and  precious  in  the  eyes  of  his  saints."  l 

The  whole  work  carries  momentum  with  it.  It  gives 
the  impression  of  an  athletic,  patient,  and  orderly  intel- 
lect. Every  advance  along  the  page  is  made  with  the 
tread  of  logical  victory.  No  unsubdued  enemies  are  left 
in  the  rear.  It  is  a  monumental  book.  It  stands  for  the 
intellectual  robustness  of  New  England  in  the  first  age. 
It  is  an  honor  to  that  community  of  pioneers,  drudging  in 
the  woods  of  Concord,  that  these  profound  and  elaborate 
discourses  could  have  been  produced,  and  endured,  among 
them. 

Another  man  deserving  at  least  a  glance  from  posterity 
is  John  Norton.  He  came  to  New  England  in  1635,  be- 
ing then  twenty-nine  years  of  age,  a  Cambridge  scholar, 
sometime  domestic  chaplain  to  Sir  William  Masham. 
Soon  after  his  arrival  in  America  he  was  settled  at  Ips- 
wich ;  in  1653  he  went  to  Boston  as  John  Cotton's  succes- 
sor ;  ten  years  later  he  went  with  Simon  Bradstreet  to 
England  on  an  embassy  of  conciliation  to  Charles  the 
Second  ;  soon  returning  he  died  in  1663.  He  was  remark- 
able for  his  early  and  brilliant  attainments  as  a  scholar, 
the  thoroughness  of  his  knowledge  of  Puritan  theology, 
the  multitude  of  his  writings,  and  his  frank  advocacy  of 

1  "  The  Gospel  Covenant,"  431-432. 


WILLIAM  HOOKE.  219 

persecution  for  all  who  dared  to  live  in  New  England 
without  holding  orthodox  opinions.  Longfellow,  in  his 
"Tragedy  of  John  Endicott,"  permits  Norton  to  describe 
himself  as 

"  A  terror  to  the  impenitent,  and  Death 
On  the  pale  horse  of  the  Apocalypse 
To  all  the  accursed  race  of  heretics."  ' 

Whosoever  peeps  into  John  Norton's  writings  will  note 
their  excessively  technical  character,  the  frequency  and  the 
hardness  of  their  divisions,  their  dry  and  jagged  diction. 
The  most  readable  of  his  books  is  "  The  Life  and  Death 
of  that  deservedly  famous  man  of  God,  Mr.  John  Cotton," 
published  in  London  in  1658.  Though  promising  to  be  a 
biography,  it  has  the  didactic  and  hortatory  tone  of  a 
sermon  ;  the  thread  of  the  narrative  is  strung  thick  with 
beads  of  moralizing ;  its  statements  are  embellished  with 
citations,  from  a  wide  range  of  history  and  literature ;  it 
abounds  in  the  antitheses  that  were  then  in  demand. 

A  thoroughly  wholesome  personage  was  William  Hooke, 
a  cousin  of  Oliver  Cromwell  and  brother-in-law  of  Crom- 
well's general,  Edward  Whalley.  He  was  born  in  1601  ; 
was  educated  at  Trinity  College,  Oxford  ;  was  for  many 
years  vicar  of  Axmouth,  Devonshire;  was  emigrant  to 
America  for  conscience*  sake  about  the  year  1636;  was 
minister  of  Taunton,  Massachusetts,  from  1637  to  1644  or 
1645  ;  then,  for  about  twelve  years  was  teacher  of  the 
church  in  New  Haven  ;  having  great  inducements  to  re- 
turn to  England  he  went  thither  in  1656,  and  became 
chaplain  to  the  Protector,  master  of  the  Savoy,  and  man  of 
influence  generally;  in  1677,  he  died  and  was  laid  to  rest 
in  Bunhill  Fields.  His  life  in  America  made  him  a  true 
American  ;  and  he  never  ceased  to  be  one,  even  after  his 
restoration  to  England,  keeping  always  his  interest  warm 

1  It  by  no  means  diminishes  the  accuracy  of  this  self-description,  that  Nor- 
ton himself  had  been  dead  two  years  at  the  date  assigned  to  the  Tragedy  in 
which  he  figures  as  a  very  lively  persecutor. 


220  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

in  American  affairs,  and  his  "  old  brotherly  affection  "  l  for 
the  young  communities  there,  of  which  he  had  been  for 
twenty  years  a  strong  and  honored  member.  Not  many 
of  his  writings  ever  got  into  print.  Those  of  them  that 
were  printed  are  sermons,  and  are  of  singular  interest  to 
us  now  for  their  literary  merit,  and  for  a  certain  flavor  of 
American  thought  and  emotion  that  still  lurks  in  them. 
Altogether  the  best  is  his  sermon  preached  at  Taunton, 
on  the  twenty-third  of  July,  1640,  "on  a  day  of  public 
humiliation  ...  in  behalf  of  our  native  country  in  time 
of  feared  dangers."  As  observers  of  public  affairs  in  Eng- 
land at  that  time,  the  people  of  America  had,  in  their 
very  distance  in  space,  something  of  the  advantage  that  is 
given  to  posterity  by  distance  in  time.  They  were  a  con- 
temporaneous posterity ;  they  had  the  knowledge  possessed 
by  those  who  were  upon  the  spot,  and  the  perspective 
enjoyed  by  those  who  were  afar  off.  In  that  great  year, 
1640,  the  men  and  women  of  New  England  saw,  perhaps 
more  clearly  than  did  their  brethren  in  the  old  home,  the 
meaning  and  the  drift  of  events  in  England,  then  rushing 
forward  into  tears  and  blood.  This  sermon  of  William 
Hooke's  is  a  striking  instance  of  their  foresight.  Its  title, 
"  New  England's  Tears  for  Old  England's  Fears,"  worthily 
indicates  the  touching  and  passionate  love  for  the  mother- 
land which  the  whole  sermon  breathes.  "  Old  England, 
dear  England  still,  .  .  .  left  indeed  by  us  in  our  persons, 
but  never  yet  forsaken  in  our  affections." 2  "  There  is  no 
land  that  claims  our  name  but  England  ;  .  .  .  there  is  no 
nation  that  calls  us  countrymen  but  the  English.  Brethren, 
did  we  not  there  draw  in  our  first  breath?  Did  not  the 
sun  first  shine  there  upon  our  heads?  Did  not  that  land 
first  bear  us,  even  that  pleasant  island,  .  .  .  that  garden 
of  the  Lord,  that  paradise  ?  " 8  But  before  the  eyes  of  the 
preacher,  as  he  spoke,  seemed  to  be  unrolled  an  appalling 

1  Letter  from  Hooke,  1671,  in  W.  B.  Sprague,  "Annals  of  Am.  Pulpit," 
L  105.  ' 

•  The  sermon,  23.  '  Ibid.  16. 


CHARLES  CHAUNCEY.  221 

vision  of  the  scenes  that  were  to  be  enacted  in  the  old 
land  they  had  left, — the  chaos,  havoc,  and  misery  of  its 
oncoming  civil  war.  One  picture  drawn  by  him  of  the 
horrors  of  a  battlefield,  has  a  realism  and  an  intensity  of 
coloring  not  easily  to  be  matched  in  any  prose.  "  Oh,  the 
shrill,  ear-piercing  clangs  of  the  trumpets,  noise  of  drums, 
the  animating  voice  of  horse-captains  and  commanders, 
learned  and  learning  to  destroy!  .  .  .  Here  ride  some  dead 
men  swagging  in  their  deep  saddles ;  there  fall  others  alive 
upon  their  dead  horses ;  death  sends  a  message  to  those 
from  the  mouth  of  the  muskets ;  these  it  talks  with  face 
to  face,  and  stabs  them  in  the  fifth  rib.  In  yonder  file 
there  is  a  man  who  hath  his  arm  struck  off  from  his 
shoulder ;  another  by  him  hath  lost  his  leg ;  here  stands  a 
soldier  with  half  a  face ;  there  fights  another  upon  his 
stumps,  and  at  once  both  kills  and  is  killed  ;  not  far  off 
lies  a  company  wallowing  in  their  sweat  and  gore  ;  such  a 
man  whilst  he  chargeth  his  musket  is  discharged  of  his 
life,  and  falls  upon  his  dead  fellow.  Every  battle  of  the 
warrior  is  with  confused  noise  and  garments  rolled  in 
blood.  Death  reigns  in  the  field,  and  is  sure  to  have  the 
day,  which  side  soever  falls.  In  the  meanwhile — O  formi- 
dable ! — the  infernal  fiends  follow  the  camp  to  catch  after 
the  souls  of  rude  nefarious  soldiers  .  .  .  who  fight  them- 
selves fearlessly  into  the  mouth  of  hell,  for  revenge,  for 
booty,  or  a  little  revenue.  ...  A  day  of  battle  is  a  day  of 
harvest  for  the  devil."  * 

At  least  one  more  of  these  great  New  England  preachers 
must  be  named  here,  Charles  Chauncey,  whose  early  and 
conspicuous  influence  upon  American  letters  was  such  as 
to  suggest  to  Cotton  Mather  the  freak  of  calling  him  our 
Cadmus  :  *  a  great  man  in  many  ways,  in  originality,  learn- 
ing, brain-force,  physical  endurance,  zest  for  work,  enthu- 
siasm, eloquence  ;  a  man  of  impetuous  and  stormy  nature, 
apt  to  assert  himself  strongly  and  to  expect  immediate  as- 

1  The  sermon,  20-21.  *"  Magnalia,"  I.  464. 


222  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

sent,  lacking  somewhat  in  tact,  capable  of  lapses  from  hero. 
ism  and  of  penitential  agonies  in  consequence  thereof.  He 
was  a  boy  of  thirteen  at  Westminster  School  at  the  very 
time  of  Guy  Fawkes's  failure  to  blow  up  the  adjacent  parlia- 
ment-house, and  thereby  lost  his  one  opportunity  of  going 
to  heaven  or  elsewhere  in  extremely  aristocratic  company. 
At  Trinity  College,  Cambridge,  Chauncey  took  his  degrees; 
he  became  professor  of  Greek  at  his  Alma  Mater  ;  and  in 
1627  he  became  vicar  of  Ware,  where,  with  his  views,  he 
had  not  long  to  wait  before  getting  into  trouble.  He  sadly 
objected  to  the  "  Book  of  Sports  ;  "  for  in  that  book  the 
clergy  were  forbidden  to  preach  on  Sunday  afternoons,  and 
their  parishioners  were  encouraged  to  employ  that  happy 
time  in  dancing,  archery,  vaulting,  may-games,  and  other 
recreations.  Chauncey  tried  to  evade  the  prohibition  by 
filling  the  Sunday  afternoons  with  a  catechetical  exercise 
for  old  and  young ;  but  this  arrangement  the  bishop 
stamped  on,  telling  him  "  that  catechising  was  as  bad  as 
preaching."1  In  1635,  he  got  into  a  new  difficulty.  He  was 
cited  before  the  High  Commission  Court  for  the  crime  of 
objecting  to  a  rail  around  the  communion  table,  and  to  the 
act  of  kneeling  in  the  communion  service.  For  this  he  was 
thrown  into  prison,  sentenced  to  pay  heavy  costs,  and  sus- 
pended from  the  ministry  till  he  should  recant.  At  last  in 
open  court  he  did  recant,  making  confession  "  that  kneeling 
at  the  receiving  of  the  holy  communion  is  a  lawful  and  com- 
mendable gesture,  and  that  a  rail  set  up  in  the  chancel  of 
any  church  ...  is  a  decent  and  convenient  ornament."  * 
Of  this  inglorious  act  Chauncey  was  soon  ashamed  ;  and 
to  the  end  of  his  days  he  lacerated  himself  for  it,  even 
saying  in  his  will  that  he  kept  ever  before  him  his  "  many 
sinful  compliances  with  .  .  .  vile  human  inventions,  and 
will -worship,  and  hell-bred  superstitions,  and  patcheries 
stitched  into  the  service  of  the  Lord  which  the  English 

1  "  Chauncey  Memorials,"  12. 

9  The  whole  document  given  in  W.  B.  Sprague,  "  Annals  of  Am.  Pulpit,* 
L  in. 


CHARLES  CHAUNCEY. 


223 


mass-book  .  .  .  and   the   Ordination    of   Priests  ...  are 
fully  fraught  withal."1 

Of  course  such  a  man  could  not  then  stay  in  England, 
except  in  jail ;  and  he  escaped  to  America,  reaching  Plym- 
outh in  1638.  There  he  stayed  as  minister  three  years.  In 
1641,  he  was  invited  to  Scituate,  and  continued  there  thir- 
teen years,  preaching,  teaching,  practising  medicine,  study- 
ing many  books,  and  encountering  many  griefs.  Espe- 
cially did  he  suffer  from  the  rebuffs  of  opponents  and  of  ex- 
treme poverty.  So  wretched  was  the  support  allowed  him 
that  he  had  to  write  to  a  friend,  "  deest  quidem  panis."  At 
last,  in  1654,  Laud  being  quiet  in  his  grave,  and  all  things  in 
England  having  a  pleasant  look  for  men  like  Chauncey,  he 
resolved  to  go  back  thither ;  but  on  his  way  to  the  ship  in 
Boston  harbor,  he  was  overtaken  by  an  offer  of  the  presi- 
dency of  Harvard  College  in  place  of  the  noble-minded 
Henry  Dunster,  who  had  been  driven  from  the  office  on 
account  of  his  frank  avowal  of  the  Baptist  heresy.8  Chaun- 
cey, who  also  had  some  taint  of  the  same  heresy,  promised 
not  to  avow  it,  and  was  inducted  into  the  great  office.  It 
proved  to  be  the  right  place  for  him  ;  and  he  filled  it  with 
illustrious  success,  not  without  sorrows,  until  his  death  in 
1672  at  the  age  of  eighty.  He  was  a  great  educating  force 
in  those  years  and  long  afterward.  Neither  labor  nor  age 
could  quell  his  energy.  He  rose  at  four  o'clock  winter 
and  summer ;  he  outdid  all  his  students  in  devotion  to 
books  ;  "  wittily  he  moderated  their  disputations  and  other 
exercises ; " '  at  College  prayers  he  caused  a  chapter  of  the 

'  "  Magnalia,"  I.  467. 

•  Win.  Hubbard,  who  graduated  in  President  Dunster's  first  class,  says  that 
Dunster  might  have  continued  in  the  presidency  "if  he  had  been  endowed 
with  that  wisdom  ...  to  have  kept  his  singular  opinion  to  himself,  when 
there  was  little  occasion  for  venting  thereof;"  ("  Gen.  Hist.  N.  E."  556)  a  sig- 
nificant remark,  throwing  some  historical  day-light  upon  clerical  casuistry  in 
New  England  in  the  early  days,  and  suggesting  visions  of  an  outward  ortho- 
doxy accepted  with  various  mental  reservations,  about  which  they  prudently 
held  their  tongues. 

»  "  Magnalia,"  J.  468. 


224 


HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITER  A  TURE. 


Hebrew  Bible  to  be  read  in  the  morning,  and  of  the  Greek 
Testament  in  the  evening,  and  upon  these  he  always  gave 
an  extemporaneous  comment  in  Latin  ;  to  all  the  students 
he  was  father,  inspirer,  guide ;  and  he  greatly  helped  to 
fill  the  land  with  scholars,  gentlemen,  and  Christians.  His 
old  age  was  of  the  glorious,  gritty  kind.  His  friends 
begged  him  not  to  work  so  hard  ;  but  he  gave  the  proud 
answer,  "  Oportet  imperatorem  stantem  mori."  One  day, 
in  winter,  the  fellows  of  the  College  were  leading  him  to- 
ward the  chapel  where  he  was  to  preach  ;  and  hoping  to 
dissuade  him  from  the  labor,  they  said,  "  Sir,  you  will  cer- 
tainly die  in  the  pulpit."  But  this,  so  far  from  intimidating 
the  grand  old  man,  gave  him  a  new  delight  ;  and  pressing  on 
more  eagerly  through  the  snow-drifts,  he  exclaimed,  "  How 
glad  I  should  be  if  what  you  say  might  prove  true ! M1 

His  published  writings  are  not  many,  and  all  are  ser- 
mons excepting  one — a  controversial  pamphlet,  "  Anti- 
synodalia  Scripta  Americana,"  1662.  His  most  important 
work  is  a  volume  of  twenty-six  sermons,  published  in  Lon- 
don, in  1659,  and  entitled,  "  The  Plain  Doctrine  of  the 
Justification  of  a  Sinner  in  the  Sight  of  God."  On  the 
title-page  we  are  told  that  the  doctrine  is  "explained  .  .  . 
in  a  plain  .  .  .  and  familiar  way  for  the  capacity  and  un- 
derstanding of  the  weak  and  ignorant  ; "  yet  the  leading 
title  of  the  book  is  in  Hebrew,  the  dedication  is  in  Latin, 
and  the  discussion  well  sprinkled  with  quotations  from 
Hebrew,  Latin,  and  Greek,  and  with  such  technical  terms 
as  synecdoche,  equipollent,  and  the  like.  In  spite  of  this, 
the  ideas  are  indeed  as  clear  as  crystal,  and  are  generally 
stated  in  English  that  is  vigorous  and  keen.  Though  the 
formality  of  stiff  topical  divisions  cramps  the  movement 
of  his  style,  and  denies  him  room  for  swing  and  flight, 
the  author's  mind  breaks  out  often  with  genuine  bright- 
ness and  power.  There  are  strokes  of  condensed  force, 
flashes  of  imagination  and  passionate  light,  felicities  of  epi- 

1  "  Magnalia,"  I.  470. 


CHARLES  CHAUNCEY. 


22$ 


thet  and  comparison,  vivifying  words,  memorable  sayings : 
"God  .  .  .  stabs  the  wicked  as  an  enemy  with  his  sword, 
but  lances  the  godly  as  a  surgeon  does  his  patient  with 
the  lancet."1  "As  the  moon  is  nearest  to  the  sun  when 
the  least  light  doth  outwardly  appear ;  so  is  God  nearest 
to  the  godly  when  they  have  the  least  outward  light  of 
comfort."2  "  Let  all  ...  careless  wretches  know  that  if 
justification  be  a  state  of  blessedness,  then  their  state  is  a 
state  of  cursedness."*  "  We  are  singing  and  chanting  to 
the  sound  of  the  viol,  while  God  sounds  an  alarum  by  the 
trumpet  of  war.  We  are  dancing  in  jollity,  while  God  is 
marching  in  battalia.  We  are  drinking  in  the  wine  and 
strong  drink,  while  God  is  letting  out  our  blood."4  "If 
death  arrests  you,  how  will  you  scramble  for  bail  ?  How 
will  you  wish  you  had  pleased  God  ?  .  .  .  Oh,  leave  not 
that  to  the  last  gasp  that  should  be  done  first.  Thou 
mayest  be  great  and  rich  and  honorable,  and  yet  not  fit  to 
live  nor  to  die ;  but  he  that  is  justified  is  fit  for  both."  * 
"  It  was  unknown  torment  that  our  Saviour  underwent. 
He  encountered  both  the  Father's  wrath  .  .  .  and  entered 
the  lists  with  Satan  and  all  the  powers  of  darkness.  .  .  . 
All  the  devils  in  hell  were  up  in  arms,  and  issued  out  of 
their  gates  ;  principalities  and  powers  are  all  let  loose 
against  the  Redeemer  of  the  world."'  "Then  let  us  pur- 
sue our  sins  with  all  possible  detestations.  .  .  .  Let  us 
stab  them  to  the  heart,  till  they  bleed  their  last,  that  drew 
the  blood  of  Christ."7 

The  works  of  President  Chauncey  that  were  published, 
formed  but  a  small  portion  of  those  that  he  wrote.  His 
manuscripts  descended  to  his  eldest  son,  thence  to  his 
grandson,  who  dying  left  them  in  possession  of  his  widow. 
This  lady  subsequently  married  again  ;  and  her  new  hus- 
band, a  godly  man,  to  wit,  a  deacon  and  pie-maker  of 
Northampton,  straightway  proceeded  to  utilize  the  learned 

1 "  The  Plain  Doctrine,"  etc.  64.  •  Ibid.  96.  «  Ibid.  40. 

4  Ibid.  43.  •  Ibid.  46.  •  Ibid.  55.  *  Ibid.  84. 

15 


226  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITER  A  TURE. 

labors  of  the  deceased  president  of  Harvard,  by  putting 
those  manuscripts  at  the  bottom  of  his  pies  in  the  oven  ; 
and  thus  the  eloquent  and  valuable  writings  of  Charles 
Chauncey  were  gradually  used  up,  their  numerous  He- 
brew and  Greek  quotations,  and  their  peppery  Calvinism, 
doubtless  adding  an  unwonted  relish  and  indigestibility  to 
the  pies  under  which  they  were  laid. 


CHAPTER   IX. 
NEW  ENGLAND:  MISCELLANEOUS  PROSE  WRITERS. 

I.  —  Nathaniel  Ward  and  his  collisions  with  Laud  —  His  position  in  early 

American  literature  —  His  large  experience  before  coming  to  America  — 
A  reminiscence  of  Prince  Rupert. 

II.  —  Career  of  Nathaniel  Ward  in   New  England—  His  "  Simple  Cobbler  of 

Agawam  "  —  Summary  of  the  book  —  The  author's  mental  traits  —  His  atti- 
tude toward  his  age  —  Vindicates  New  England  from  the  calumny  that  it 
tolerates  variety  of  opinions  —  His  satire  upon  fashionable  dames  in  the 
colony  and  upon  long-haired  men  —  His  discussion  of  the  troubles  in  Eng- 
land —  Literary  traits  of  the  book. 

III.  —  Roger  Williams  as  revealed   in  his  own  writings  —  His  exceptional  at- 
tractiveness as  an  early  New-Englander  —  What  he  stood  for  in  his  time  in 
New  England  —  A  troublesome  personage  to  his  contemporaries  and  why 

—  His  special  sympathy  with  Indians  and  with  all  other  unfortunate  folk. 
IV.—  First  visit  of  Roger  Williams  to  England—  His  first  book—  His  interest 

in  the  great  struggle  in  England  —  His  reply  to  John  Cotton's  justification 
of  his  banishment  from  Massachusetts  —  His  book  against  a  national  church 

—  His  "  Bloody  Tenet  of  Persecution  "  —  John  Cotton's  reply  —  Williams'* 
powerful  rejoinder  —  Other  writings  —  His  letters  —  Personal  traits  shown  in 
them  —  His  famous  letter  against  lawlessness  and  tyranny. 


IN  the  year  1631,  William  Laud,  Bishop  of  London,  faith- 
fully harrying  his  diocese  in  search  of  ministers  who  might 
be  so  insolent  as  to  deviate  from  his  own  high  standard 
of  doctrine  and  ceremony,  became  aware  of  the  presence, 
in  one  of  his  parishes,  of  an  extremely  uncomfortable  par- 
son named  Nathaniel  Ward,  rector  of  Stondon  Massey, 
Essex.  Accordingly,  on  the  twelfth  of  December  of  that 
year,  this  parson  was  brought  before  the  bishop  for  in- 
spection. Though  he  escaped  that  time,  the  bishop  kept 
his  inexorable  eye  upon  him,  and  frequently  thereafter 
cited  him  into  his  presence  ;  and  at  last,  in  1633,  "left  him 

227 


228  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

under  the  sentence  of  excommunication."  l  This  man 
thus  turned  loose  upon  the  world  by  the  ungentle  help  of 
his  bishop,  naturally  found  his  way  very  soon  to  New  Eng- 
land, where  arriving  in  1634  he  remained  twelve  years,  and 
where  by  his  incisive  and  stiff  opinions,  the  weight  of  his 
unusual  legal  learning,  his  skill  and  pungency  as  a  writer, 
and  the  flavor  of  his  piquant  individuality,  he  consider- 
ably influenced  contemporary  events,  stamped  some  of  his 
own  features  upon  the  jurisprudence  of  Massachusetts,  and 
connected  himself  with  our  early  literature  by  the  compo- 
sition of  a  book  the  most  eccentric  and  amusing  that  was 
produced  in  America  during  the  colonial  period. 

Perhaps  no  other  Englishman  who  came  to  America  in 
those  days,  brought  with  him  more  of  the  ripeness  that 
is  born,  not  only  of  time  and  study,  but  of  distinguished 
early  associations,  extensive  travel  in  foreign  lands,  and 
varied  professional  experience  at  home.  He  was  gradu- 
ated at  Emmanuel  College,  Cambridge,  in  1603,  and  is 
named  by  Fuller  among  the  learned  writers  of  that  college 
who  were  not  fellows.  He  at  first  entered  the  profession 
of  the  law,  which  he  practised  several  years;  he  then  spent 
several  years  upon  the  continent ;  and  upon  his  return  to 
England  took  holy  orders,  and  was  settled  in  the  parish 
from  which,  after  about  ten  years,  he  was  ejected  by  Laud. 
His  personal  and  professional  standing  may  be  partly  in- 
ferred from  his  acquaintance  with  Sir  Francis  Bacon,  with 
Archbishop  Usher,  and  with  the  famous  theologian  of 
Heidelberg,  David  Paraeus.  It  was  during  his  residence 
upon  the  continent,  that  he  was  brought  into  relations 
of  some  sort  with  the  family  of  the  Princess  Elizabeth, 
daughter  of  James  the  First,  and  wife  of  Frederick,  elector 
Palatine  ;  and  in  this  way  he  came  to  have  that  immediate 
contact  with  infantile  royalty  which  many  years  later  sug- 
gested a  characteristic  passage  in  the  book  that  we  are 
soon  to  inspect.  He  took  into  his  arms  the  young  child 

1  Laud,  quoted  in  J.  W.  Dean,  *  Memoir  "  of  Ward,  39. 


\ 

( 

NATHANIEL    WARD.  229 

of  Frederick  and  Elizabeth ;  and  when,  long  afterward,  that 
young  child  had  expanded  into  the  impetuous,  swearing 
cavalier  hero  of  the  English  civil  war,  the  terrible  Prince 
Rupert,  the  good  old  Puritan  preacher,  Nathaniel  Ward, 
then  far  away  beyond  the  sea  in  America,  wrote  of  him 
these  serious  words :  "  I  have  had  him  in  my  arms  ;  .  .  .  I 
wish  I  had  him  there  now.  If  I  mistake  not,  he  promised 
then  to  be  a  good  prince ;  but  I  doubt  he  hath  forgot  it. 
If  I  thought  he  would  not  be  angry  with  me,  I  would 
pray  hard  to  his  Maker  to  make  him  a  right  Roundhead,  a 
wise-hearted  Palatine,  a  thankful  man  to  the  English ;  to 
forgive  all  his  sins,  and  at  length  to  save  his  soul,  not- 
withstanding all  his  God-damn-me's."  * 

II. 

Soon  after  his  arrival  in  Massachusetts  Nathaniel  Ward 
became  minister  to  a  raw  settlement  of  Puritans  at  Aga- 
wam.  *  His  health  here  soon  gave  way;  and  in  two  or 
three  years  he  surrendered  his  pastorate.  But  a  man  of  so 
strong  and  various  a  culture  as  he,  could  not  be  left  idle 
in  New  England.  He  was  placed  on  a  commission  to  form 
a  code  of  laws  for  the  colony,  and  in  that  capacity  did 
some  good  service.  Early  in  1645,  he  commenced  writing 
the  remarkable  book,  "  The  Simple  Cobbler  of  Agawam," 
which  will  keep  for  him  a  perpetual  place  in  early  Ameri- 
can literature.  This  book  appears  to  have  been  finished  in 
the  latter  part  of  1646,  and  was  at  once  transmitted  to 
London  for  publication,  where  it  came  from  the  press  in 
January,  1647.  It  had  the  good  fortune  to  fit  the  times 
and  the  passions  of  men  ;  it  was  caught  up  into  instant 
notice,  and  ran  through  four  editions  within  the  first  yeai. 

"  The  Simple  Cobbler  of  Agawam  "  may  be  described  as 
a  prose  satire  upon  what  seemed  to  the  author  to  be  the 

1  "  Simple  Cobbler  of  Agawam,"  66-67. 

•The  beautiful  Indian  name  of  that  district,  afterward  foolishly  exchanged 
for  Ipswich. 


230  HISTOR  V  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

frightful  license  of  new  opinions  in  his  time,  both  in  New 
England  and  at  home ;  upon  the  frivolity  of  women  and 
the  long  hair  of  men  ;  and  finally  upon  the  raging  storm 
of  English  politics,  in  the  strife  then  going  forward  between 
sects,  parties,  parliament,  and  king.  It  is  a  tremendous 
partisan  pamphlet,  intensely  vital  even  yet,  full  of  fire,  wit, 
whim,  eloquence,  sarcasm,  invective,  patriotism,  bigotry. 
One  would  have  to  search  long  among  the  rubbish  of  books 
thrown  forth  to  the  public  during  those  hot  and  teeming 
days,  to  find  one  more  authentically  representing  the  stir, 
the  earnestness,  the  intolerance,  the  hope,  and  the  wrath  of 
the  times  than  does  this  book.  Thinly  disguising  his  name 
under  the  synonym  of  Theodore  de  la  Guard,  the  author 
speaks  of  himself  as  a  humble  English  cobbler  in  America, 
quite  unable  to  stick  to  his  last,  or  to  restrain  his  thoughts 
from  brooding  anxiously  over  the  errors,  follies,  sins,  griefs, 
and  perils  of  his  countrymen  on  both  sides  of  the  sea. 
The  title-page  is  too  racy  and  characteristic  a  part  of  the 
book  to  be  omitted  :  "  The  Simple  Cobbler  of  Agawam  in 
America  :  willing  to  help  'mend  his  native  country,  lament- 
ably tattered  both  in  the  upper-leather  and  sole,  with  all 
the  honest  stitches  he  can  take  ;  and  as  willing  never  to  be 
paid  for  his  work  by  old  English  wonted  pay.  It  is  his 
trade  to  patch  all  the  year  long  gratis.  Therefore  I  pray 
gentlemen  keep  your  purses.  By  Theodore  de  la  Guard. 
'  In  rebus  arduis  ac  tenui  spe,  fortissima  quaeque  consilia 
tutissima  sunt.'  Cic.  In  English  : 

When  boots  and  shoes  are  torn  up  to  the  lefts, 
Cobblers  must  thrust  their  awls  up  to  the  hefts; 
This  is  no  time  to  fear  Apelles'  gramm  : 
'  Ne  sutor  quidem  ultra  crepidam.' 

London  :  Printed  by  J.  D.  and  R.  I.  for  Stephen  Bowtell, 
at  the  sign  of  the  Bible  in  Pope's  Head  Alley,  1647." 

The  assumed  character  of  a  humble  cobbler  digressing 
from  his  vocation  of  mending  shoes  to  that  of  mending 
commonwealths,  is  one  which  the  author  succeeds  in  main- 
taining only  upon  the  title-page  and  in  certain  formal 


NATHANIEL    WARD.  23! 

divisions  of  his  work :  as  where  he  puts  on  "  a  most  humble 
heel-piece  to  the  most  honorable  head-piece,  the  parlia- 
ment of  England  ;  "  l  or  where  he  drives  in  "  half  a  dozen 
plain,  honest,  country  hobnails,  such  as  the  martyrs  were 
wont  to  wear."*  In  the  body  and  tissue  of  the  work,  how- 
ever,  he  makes  no  effort  to  write  like  a  cobbler;  on  the 
contrary,  in  nearly  every  paragraph,  the  irrepressible  indi- 
viduality of  Nathaniel  Ward,  Puritan  gentleman,  scholar, 
lawyer,  clergyman,  and  bigot,  urges  itself  to  the  surface  in 
language  which  has  the  authenticity  of  a  mental  photograph. 

The  key-note  of  the  entire  work  is  struck  in  the  open- 
ing sentence:  "  Either  I  am  in  an  apoplexy,  or  that  man 
is  in  a  lethargy,  who  doth  not  now  sensibly  feel  God 
shaking  the  heavens  over  his  head  and  the  earth  under  his 
feet.  .  .  .  The  truths  of  God  are  the  pillars  of  the  world, 
whereon  states  and  churches  may  stand  quiet  if  they  will; 
if  they  will  not,  he  can  easily  shake  them  off  into  delusions 
and  distractions  enough."  The  remainder  of  the  book  is  but 
an  evolution  and  a  reverberation  of  these  two  statements. 

It  must  be  admitted,  on  the  evidence  of  this  book,  that 
Nathaniel  Ward  was  a  grumbler — a  sincere,  witty,  and 
valiant  grumbler.  Everything  and  everybody  seemed  to 
him  to  be  going  wrong.  The  times  were  out  of  joint. 
"  Sathan  is  now  in  his  passions  ;  ...  he  loves  to  fish  in 
roiled  waters."  *  And  the  difficulty  between  Nathaniel 
Ward  and  the  age  he  lived  in,  arose  from  the  not  uncom- 
mon fact  that  he  shrank  from  the  consequences  of  his  own 
ideas.  He  was  one  of  those  unhappy  persons  with  the\ 
brain  of  a  radical  and  the  temperament  of  a  conservative.  I 
His  own  dissent  from  the  teachings  of  the  church  on  mat-' 
ters  of  doctrine  and  ceremony  was  incipient  radicalism  ; 
but  he  failed  to  remember  that  having  once  set  up  reason 
against  authority  on  some  topics,  it  was  illogical  for  him 
to  deny  to  reason  its  dispute  with  authority  upon  all  topics. 
He  had  himself  been  ejected  for  not  conforming  to  the 

1  «  The  Simple  Cobbler,"  etc.  8x  f  Ibid.  85.  •  Ibid.  i. 


232 


HISTORY  OF  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 


standard  of  Bishop  Laud ;  and  while  crying  out  against 
that  as  an  injustice,  he  was  still  prepared  to  eject  all  who 
did  not  conform  to  his  own  standard.  Looking  out  over 
English  Christendom,  he  saw  nothing  but  a  chaos  of  jan- 
gling opinions,  upstart  novelties,  lawless  manners,  illimit- 
able changes  in  codes,  institutions,  and  creeds.  All  this 
filled  him  with  alarm.  It  seemed  to  him  that  the  Al- 
mighty was  raining  discord  and  confusion  upon  the  earth 
in  punishment  for  its  departure  from  the  truth — the  truth 
as  held  by  Nathaniel  Ward.  What  was  to  be  done?  His 
book  answers  the  question  with  a  three -fold  remedy. 
First,  the  exact  truth  must  be  announced,  and  no  tolera- 
tion shown  to  the  wretches  who  might  dispute  it.  Second, 
the  sports,  fashions,  vanities,  frivolities  of  men  and  women 
must  be  extinguished  in  a  universal  enforcement  of  Puri- 
tan primness  and  asceticism.  Finally,  there  must  be  a 
speedy  cessation  of  warfare  in  England,  through  a  general 
agreement  to  purity  and  justice  in  church  and  state. 

We  shall  find  the  discussion  of  the  first  subject,  upon 
the  whole,  the  most  enjoyable.  Hardly  anything  could  be 
conceived  more  racy,  frank,  or  droll,  than  the  childlike 
ingenuousness  with  which  the  author  deals  out  ferocious 
declamations  against  freedom  of  opinion,  or  gibbets  the 
doctrine  of  religious  toleration  as  the  most  damnable 
treason  and  blasphemy.  Here,  indeed,  is  the  undisguised 
and  undiluted  logic  of  persecution  for  the  crime  of  free 
thought.  The  fathers  of  the  inquisition  might  have  reveled 
over  the  first  twenty-five  pages  of  this  Protestant  book, 
that  actually  blaze  with  the  eloquent  savagery  and  rap- 
ture of  religious  intolerance.  He  desires  at  the  outset  to 
repel  the  infamous  calumny  that  had  somehow  got  abroad 
in  old  England,  and  that  represented  New  England  as  a 
place  where  diversity  of  opinions  was  tolerated :  "  We 
have  been  reputed  a  colluvies  of  wild  opinionists  swarmed 
into  a  remote  wilderness,  to  find  elbow-room  for  our  fa- 
natic doctrines  and  practices.  I  trust  our  diligence  past, 
and  constant  sedulity  against  such  persons  and  courses,  will 


NATHANIEL    WARD. 


233 


plead  better  things  for  us.  I  dare  take  upon  me  to  be  the 
herald  of  New  England  so  far  as  to  proclaim  to  the  world, 
in  the  name  of  our  colony,  that  all  Familists,  Antino- 
mians,  Anabaptists,  and  other  enthusiasts,  shall  have  free 
liberty — to  keep  away  from  us  ;  and  such  as  will  come — 
to  be  gone  as  fast  as  they  can,  the  sooner  the  better."  But 
though  so  foul  a  shame  as  religious  toleration  does  not  at- 
tach to  New  England,  he  confesses  that  there  is  an  English 
colony,  planted  in  a  certain  "  West  Indian  Island,"  where 
are  provided  "  free  stable-room  and  litter  for  all  kind  of 
consciences,  be  they  never  so  dirty  or  jadish,"  and  where 
things  have  reached  so  vile  a  pass  that  it  is  "  actionable, 
yea,  treasonable,  to  disturb  any  man  in  his  religion,  or 
to  discommend  it,  whatever  it  be."  This,  he  tells  us,  is 
"  profaneness  ;  "  it  is  laying  "  religious  foundations  on  the 
ruin  of  true  religion  ;  which  strictly  binds  every  conscience 
to  contend  earnestly  for  the  truth,  to  preserve  unity  of 
spirit,  faith,  and  ordinances,  to  be  all  like-minded,  of  one 
accord ;  every  man  to  take  his  brother  into  his  Christian 
care,  to  stand  fast  with  one  spirit,  with  one  mind,  striving 
together  for  the  faith  of  the  Gospel,  and  by  no  means  to 
permit  heresies  or  erroneous  opinions.  .  .  .  Irregular  dis- 
pensations dealt  forth  by  the  facilities  of  men,  are  the 
frontiers  of  error,  the  redoubts  of  schism,  the  perilous 
irritaments  of  carnal  and  spiritual  enmity.  My  heart  hath 
naturally  detested  four  things:  the  standing  of  the  Apoc- 
rypha in  the  Bible,  foreigners  dwelling  in  my  country  to 
crowd  our  native  subjects  into  the  corners  of  the  earth, 
alchemized  coins,  tolerations  of  divers  religions  or  of  one 
religion  in  segregant  shapes.  .  .  .  Poly-piety  is  the  greatest 
impiety  in  the  world.  ...  To  authorize  an  untruth  by  a 
toleration  of  state,  is  to  build  a  sconce  against  the  walls  of 
heaven,  to  batter  God  out  of  his  chair.  To  tell  a  practical 
lie  is  a  great  sin,  but  yet  transient ;  but  to  set  up  a  theori- 
cal  untruth  is  to  warrant  every  lie  that  lies  from  its  root  to 
the  top  of  every  branch  it  hath,  which  are  not  a  few !  ... 
He  that  is  willing  to  tolerate  any  religion  or  discrepant 


234 


HISTORY  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 


way  of  religion,  besides  his  own,  unless  it  be  in  matters 
merely  indifferent,  either  doubts  of  his  own,  or  is  not  sin- 
cere in  it.  He  that  is  willing  to  tolerate  any  unsound 
opinion,  that  his  own  may  also  be  tolerated,  though  never 
so  sound,  will  for  a  need  hang  God's  Bible  at  the  Devil's 
girdle.  .  .  .  That  state  that  will  give  liberty  of  conscience 
in  matters  of  religion,  must  give  liberty  of  conscience  and 
conversation  in  their  moral  laws,  or  else  the  fiddle  will  be 
out  of  tune,  and  some  of  the  strings  crack.  .  .  .  There  is 
talk  of  an  universal  toleration.  I  would  talk  as  loud  as  I 
could  against  it,  did  I  know,"  he  adds  with  solemn  irony, 
"what  more  apt  and  reasonable  sacrifice  England  could 
offer  to  God  for  his  late  performing  all  his  heavenly  truths, 
than  an  universal  toleration  of  all  hellish  errors  ;  or  how 
they  shall  make  an  universal  reformation,  but  by  making 
Christ's  academy  the  Devil's  university,  where  any  man 
may  commence  heretique  'per  saltum,'  where  he  that  is 
4  films  diabolicus'  or  'simpliciter  pessimus'  may  have  his 
grace  to  go  to  hell  '  cum  publico  privilegio,'  and  carry  as 
many  after  him  as  he  can.  .  .  .  It  is  said  though  a  man  have 
light  enough  himself  to  see  the  truth,  yet  if  he  hath  not 
enough  to  enlighten  others,  he  is  bound  to  tolerate  them. 
I  will  engage  myself  that  all  the  devils  in  Britannia  shall 
sell  themselves  to  their  shirts,  to  purchase  a  lease  of  this 
position  for  three  of  their  lives,  under  the  seal  of  the  parlia- 
ment. It  is  said  that  men  ought  to  have  liberty  of  their  con- 
science, and  that  it  is  persecution  to  debar  them  of  it.  ... 
Let  all  the  wits  under  the  heavens  lay  their  heads  together 
and  find  an  assertion  worse  than  this  (one  excepted)  I  will 
petition  to  be  chosen  the  universal  idiot  of  the  world."1 
Then,  glancing  across  the  sea  toward  England,  and  reflect- 
ing upon  the  happy  tidings  which  had  reached  him  of  the 
Presbyterian  ascendency  there,  he  congratulates  his  breth- 
ren upon  the  goodly  prospect  of  realizing  in  that  country 
also  this  iron-clamped  paradise  of  uniformity  in  opinions 

1  "  The  Simple  Cobbler,"  etc.  3-12. 


NATHANIEL    WARD. 


235 


— opinions  beaten  into  one  shape  by  the  sledge-hammer 
of  the  law :  "  I  am  rather  glad  to  hear  the  Devil  is  break- 
ing up  house  in  England,  and  removing  somewhither  else. 
Give  him  leave  to  sell  all  his  rags  and  odd-ends  by  the  out- 
cry ;  and  let  his  petty  chapmen  make  their  market  while 
they  may :  upon  my  poor  credit  it  will  not  last  long.  .  .  . 
Fear  nothing,  gentlemen  ;  ...  ye  have  turned  the  Devil 
out  of  doors  ;  fling  all  his  old  parrel  after  him  out  at  the 
windows,  lest  he  makes  an  errand  for  it  again."  Having 
thus  launched  out  into  the  pleasant  task  of  giving  advice, 
he  continues  to  lavish  it  upon  his  readers  under  no  less 
than  ten  heads.  For  example,  he  warns  young  men  against 
the  deadly  risk  of  even  listening  to  errorists  :  "  Their 
breath  is  contagious,  their  leprey  spreading.  .  .  .  He 
usually  hears  best  in  their  meetings,  that  stops  his  ears 
closest ;  he  opens  his  mouth  to  best  purpose,  that  keeps  it 
shut ;  and  he  doeth  best  of  all,  that  declines  their  company 
as  wisely  as  he  may.  .  .  .  Here  I  hold  myself  bound  to 
set  up  a  beacon  to  give  warning  of  a  new-sprung  sect  of 
phrantastics,  which  would  persuade  themselves  and  others 
that  they  have  discovered  the  Nor-West  passage  to  Heaven. 
These  wits  of  the  game  cry  up  and  down  in  corners  such 
bold  ignotions  of  a  new  gospel,  new  Christ,  new  faith,  and 
new  gay-nothings,  as  trouble  unsettled  heads,  querulous 
hearts,  and  not  a  little  grieve  the  Spirit  of  God.  I  desire 
all  good  men  may  be  saved  from  their  lunatic  creed  by 
infidelity;  and  rather  believe  these  torrid  overtures  will 
prove  in  time  nothing  but  horrid  raptures  down  to  the 
lowest  hell,  from  which  he  that  would  be  delivered,  let  him 
avoid  these  blasphemers,  a  late  fry  of  croaking  frogs,  not 
to  be  endured  in  a  religious  state ;  no,  if  it  were  possible, 
not  an  hour.  .  .  .  Since  I  knew  what  to  fear,  my  timorous 
heart  hath  dreaded  three  things  :  a  blazing  star  appear- 
ing in  the  air;  a  state-comet,  I  mean  a  favorite,  rising 
in  a  kingdom  ;  a  new  opinion  spreading  in  religion."  l 

1  M  The  Simple  Cobbler,"  etc.  13-21. 


236  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITER  A  TURE. 

As  the  author  comes  within  sight  of  the  end  of  his  dia- 
tribe against  toleration,  he  bethinks  him  of  his  purpose 
"  to  speak  a  word  to  the  women  anon  ;  "  and  being  con- 
scious of  a  good  deal  of  pent-up  invective  within  himself 
upon  that  subject,  he  thinks  it  merciful  to  stop  and  notify 
the  women  of  what  they  are  to  expect :  "  in  the  meantime 
I  entreat  them  to  prepare  patience."  Notwithstanding 
this  note  of  warning,  the  reader  is  quite  unlikely  to  be 
prepared  for  the  untempered  fury,  at  once  merciless  and 
mannerless,  with  which  this  clerical  barbarian  proceeds 
to  buffet  the  fashionable  dames  of  the  period.  He  ex- 
plains why  he  treats  of  them  in  a  separate  division  of  the 
book :  it  is  because  they  are  "  deficients  or  redundants, 
not  to  be  brought  under  any  rule  ; "  and,  besides,  he  "  was 
loath  to  pester  better  matter  with  such  stuff."  Having  de- 
cided, notwithstanding  their  insignificance,  to  give  them  a 
small  corner  in  his  book,  he  then  makes  bold  "  for  this  once 
to  borrow  a  little  of  their  loose-tongued  liberty,  and  mis- 
spend a  word  or  two  upon  their  long-waisted  but  short- 
skirted  patience."  "  I  honor  the  woman  that  can  honor 
herself  with  her  attire ;  a  good  text  always  deserves  a  fair 
margent ; "  but  as  for  a  woman  who  lives  but  to  ape  the 
newest  court-fashions,  "  I  look  at  her  as  the  very  gizzard 
of  a  trifle,  the  product  of  a  quarter  of  a  cipher,  the  epitome 
of  nothing ;  fitter  to  be  kicked,  if  she  were  of  a  kickable  sub- 
stance, than  either  honored  or  humored.  To  speak  moder- 
ately, I  truly  confess,  it  is  beyond  the  ken  of  my  under- 
standing to  conceive  how  those  women  should  have  any  true 
grace  or  valuable  virtue,  that  have  so  little  wit  as  to  disfigure 
themselves  with  such  exotic  garbs,  as  not  only  dismantles 
their  native,  lovely  lustre,  but  transclouts  them  into  gaunt 
bar-geese,  ill-shapen  shotten  shell-fish,  Egyptian  hieroglyph- 
ics, or  at  the  best  into  French  flirts  of  the  pastry,  which 
a  proper  English  woman  should  scorn  with  her  heels.  It 
is  no  marvel  they  wear  drails  on  the  hinder  part  of  their 
heads  ;  having  nothing,  it  seems,  in  the  forepart  but  a  few 
squirrels'  brains  to  help  them  frisk  from  one  ill-favored 


NATHANIEL    WARD. 


237 


fashion  to  another.  .  .  .  We  have  about  five  or  six  of  them 
in  our  colony :  if  I  see  any  of  them  accidentally,  I  cannot 
cleanse  my  fancy  of  them  for  a  month  after.  ...  If  any 
man  think  I  have  spoken  rather  merrily  than  seriously,  he 
is  much  mistaken :  I  have  written  what  I  write  with  all 
the  indignation  I  can,  and  no  more  than  I  ought."  * 

It  is  not  easy  for  one  of  these  fierce  prophets  of  Puri- 
tanism to  pass  from  invectives  against  "  short-skirted " 
women,  without  pouring  a  few  drops  of  contemptuous  ink 
upon  long-haired  men  :  "  A  short  promise  is  a  far  safer 
guard  than  a  long  lock  ;  it  is  an  ill  distinction  which  God 
is  loath  to  look  at,  and  his  angels  cannot  know  his  saints 
by.  Though  it  be  not  the  mark  of  the  beast,  yet  it  may 
be  the  mark  of  a  beast  prepared  to  slaughter.  I  am  sure 
men  use  not  to  wear  such  manes ;  I  am  also  sure  soldiers 
use  to  wear  other  marklets  ...  in  time  of  battle."8 

From  this  point  in  the  book  the  author  passes  to  the 
discussion  of  the  troubles  in  England  :  "  Having  done 
with  the  upper  part  of  my  work,  I  would  now  with  all 
humble  willingness  set  on  the  best  piece  of  sole-leather  I 
have,  did  I  not  fear  I  should  break  my  awl,  which  though 
it  may  be  a  right  old  English  blade,  yet  it  is  but  little  and 
weak."  8  He  desires  "  to  speak  such  a  word  over  the  sea  " 
as  may  persuade  "  to  a  comely,  brotherly,  seasonable,  and 
reasonable  cessation  of  arms  on  both  sides,"  and  may 
put  a  stop  to  "  these  wearisome  wars."  In  the  original 
quarrel  between  the  parliament  and  the  king,  he  justifies 
the  parliament ;  and  he  does  not  flinch  at  the  avowal  of  the 
right  of  a  people  to  take  up  arms  against  their  king.  To  the 
objection  that  prayers  and  tears  "  are  the  people's  weap- 
ons," he  replies :  "  So  are  swords  and  pistols,  when  God 
and  parliaments  bid  them  arm.  Prayers  and  tears  are 
good  weapons  for  them  that  have  nothing  but  knees  and 
eyes ;  but  most  men  are  made  with  teeth  and  nails ;  only 
they  must  neither  scratch  for  liberties  nor  bite  prerogatives, 

»  "  The  Simple  Cobbler,"  etc.  25-30.  •  Ibid.  32.          »  Ibid.  32-33. 


238  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITER  A  TURE. 

till  they  have  wept  and  prayed  as  God  would  have  them."' 
Yet  Nathaniel  Ward  shrank  from  extreme  democratic  con« 
elusions;  and  while  he  was  willing  to  fight  against  the 
king  in  the  wrong,  he  preferred  to  fight  for  him  in  the 
right.  He  sincerely  yearned  for  the  restoration  of  the  king,, 
first  to  correct  opinions,  and  then  to  his  throne.  It  seemed 
to  him  possible  for  a  wise  and  courageous  statesmanship 
"  to  cut  an  exquisite  thread  between  kings'  prerogatives 
and  subjects'  liberties  of  all  sorts ;  so  as  Caesar  might  have 
his  due,  and  people  their  share,  without  such  sharp  dis- 
putes." 2  In  pursuing  this  thought,  he  reaches  at  last  the 
determination  to  make  a  manly  appeal  directly  to  the  king 
himself,  telling  him  with  full  voice  some  loyal  truths  that 
his  courtiers  had  not  courage  to  mention  to  him  even  in  a 
whisper.  His  prayer  to  the  king,  conceived  in  no  trucu- 
lent spirit,  but  in  that  of  sincere  affection,  is  in  some  pas- 
sages very  noble :  it  has,  throughout,  a  stern  eloquence, 
and  the  grandeur  of  overpowering  emotion  ;  the  author 
bravely  telling  the  king,  "  I  am  resolved  to  display  my 
unfurled  soul  in  your  very  face,  and  to  storm  you  with 
volleys  of  love  and  loyalty."3 

Upon  the  whole,  "  The  Simple  Cobbler  of  Agawam  "  is 
a  droll  and  pungent  bit  of  early  American  prose,  with 
many  literary  offences  upon  its  head :  an  excessive  fond- 
ness for  antitheses ;  an  untempered  enjoyment  of  quirks 
and  turns  and  petty  freaks  of  phraseology ;  the  pursuit 
of  puns  and  metaphors  beyond  all  decorum ;  the  blurring 
of  its  sentences  with  great  daubs  and  patches  of  Latin 
quotation ;  the  willing  employment  of  outlandish  and  un- 
couth words  belonging  to  no  language  at  all,  sometimes 
huddled  together  into  combinations  that  defy  syntax  and 
set  all  readers  aghast.  For  example,  he  will  be  a  bold  man 
who  can  affirm  at  sight  in  what  language  this  sentence  is 
written,  or  what  it  means  :  "  If  the  whole  conclave  of  hell 
can  so  compromise  exadverse  and  diametrical  contra^. 

1  "  The  Simple  Cobbler,"  etc.  48-49.         *  Ibid.  53.  s  Ibid.  56. 


NATHANIEL    WARD.  239 

dictions  as  to  compel itize  such  a  multimonstrous  mau- 
frey  of  heteroclites  and  quicquidlibets  quietly,  I  trust  I 
may  say  with  all  humble  reverence,  they  can  do  more  than 
the  senate  of  heaven."  l  Any  one  who  fairly  reads  the 
book,  however,  may  see  that  the  literary  sins  of  its  author 
are  sins  that  he  shared  with  most  of  the  prose  writers  of 
his  period,  on  both  sides  of  the  ocean ;  and  that  in  his  case 
they  are  partly  redeemed  by  the  utter  sincerity  of  his  work, 
its  invincible  ardor  and  power.  In  some  particulars  he 
was  as  a  writer  even  superior  to  the  most  of  his  contem- 
poraries ;  for  there  are  usually  in  his  periods  a  compact- 
ness, a  directness,  and  a  brevity  not  commonly  to  be  seen 
in  the  prose  style  of  the  seventeenth  century,  in  which 
vast,  involved,  amorphous  sentences  were  wont  to  heave 
their  huge  bulks  along  the  page — the  verbal  mastodons 
and  megatheria  of  a  primitive  rhetorical  epoch.  Besides, 
Nathaniel  Ward  had  courage  of  opinion,  an  unabashed  en- 
thusiasm for  ideas — his  own  ideas,  frankness,  disdain  of 
lisping,  finical,  and  ambiguous  utterance,  a  hearty  and 
high-spirited  mirth  born  of  a  good  conscience  and  a  good 
digestion,  a  force  of  imagination  that  occasionally  ut- 
tered itself  in  a  rough  but  virile  and  genuine  eloquence. 
Thus,  in  reproaching  his  contemporaries  for  turning  away 
from  old  truths  as  if  they  were  "  superannuate  and  sapless, 
if  not  altogether  antiquate,"  he  exclaims  with  glorious 
indignation  :  "  No  man  ever  saw  a  gray  hair  on  the  head 
or  beard  of  any  truth,  wrinkle  or  morphew  on  its  face." a 
His  faith  in  the  omnipotence  of  truth  rushes  out  in  dashing 
phrases  of  defiance :  "  Ye  will  find  it  a  far  easier  field  to 
wage  war  against  all  the  armies  that  ever  were  or  will  be 
on  earth,  and  all  the  angels  of  heaven,  than  to  take  up 
arms  against  any  truth  of  God."  *  Addressing  the  states- 

1  "  The  Simple  Cobbler."  etc.  22  23.  *  Ibid.  23. 

'  Ibid.  75.  In  writing  this  true  and  grand  sentence,  the  author  apparently 
did  not  observe  how  perfectly  it  annihilated  his  own  doctrine  against  toler- 
ance. Of  course,  if  truth  is  thus  irresistible,  it  hardly  needs  the  protection  of 
human  force,  and  may  be  safely  left  to  take  care  of  itself  in  a  free  fight  with 
error  in  all  ages  and  over  all  the  world. 


240 


HISTOK  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITER  A  TURE. 


men  of  England,  "the  architectors  now  at  work,"  he 
makes  an  appeal,  the  earnest  manliness  of  which  is  finely 
edged  by  its  humor :  "  Most  expert  gentlemen,  be  en- 
treated at  length  to  set  our  head  right  on  our  shoulders, 
that  we  may  once  look  upwards  and  go  forwards,  like 
proper  Englishmen."  l 

After  all,  the  one  great  trait  in  this  book  which  must  be 
I  to  us  the  most  welcome,  is  its  superiority  to  the  hesitant, 
imitative,  and  creeping  manner  that  is  the  sure  sign  of  a 
provincial  literature.  The  first  accents  of  literary  speech 
in  the  American  forests,  seem  not  to  have  been  provincial, 
but  free,  fearless,  natural.  Our  earliest  writers,  at  any 
rate,  wrote  the  English  language  spontaneously,  forcefully, 
like  honest  men.  We  shall  have  to  search  in  some  later 
period  of  our  intellectual  history  to  find,  if  at  all,  a  race  of 
literary  snobs  and  imitators — writers  who  in  their  thin  and 
timid  ideas,  their  nerveless  diction,  and  their  slavish  simu- 
lation of  the  supposed  literary  accent  of  the  mother- 
country,  make  confession  of  the  inborn  weakness  and 
beggarliness  of  literary  provincials. 

But  proud,  and  nobly  self-sufficient,  as  were  the  makers 
of  American  literature  in  our  first  age,  they  still  loved 
England  as  their  home  ;  and  they  always  spoke  of  it  as 
such,  with  a  sweet  sincerity  of  passion  that  has  in  it  both 
pathos  and  eloquence.  Nathaniel  Ward  could  not  help 
calling  England  "  that  most  comfortable  and  renowned 
island,"2  and  "the  stateliest  island  the  world  hath;"8 
and  everywhere  he  makes  it  manifest  that  in  leaving  Eng- 
land he  had  not  left  behind  him  the  tenderest  and  most 
patriotic  solicitude  for  England,  and  for  the  triumph  of 
the  struggling  patriots  within  it  :  "  Go  on,  therefore,  re- 
nowned gentlemen  ;  fall  on  resolvedly,  till  your  hands 
cleave  to  your  swords,  your  swords  to  your  enemies'  hearts, 
your  hearts  to  victory,  your  victories  to  triumph,  your 
triumphs  to  the  everlasting  praise  of  Him  that  hath  given 

1  "The  Simple  Cobbler,"  etc.  36.  *  Ibid.  25.  8  Ibid.  57. 


ROGER    WILLIAMS. 


24I 


you  spirits  to  offer  yourselves  willingly,  and  to  jeopard 
your  lives  in  high  perils,  for  his  name  and  service' sake. 
And  we,  your  brethren,  though  we  necessarily  abide  be- 
yond Jordan,  and  remain  on  the  American  sea-coasts,  will 
send  up  armies  of  prayers  to  the  throne  of  Grace  that  the 
God  of  power  and  goodness  would  encourage  your  hearts, 
cover  your  heads,  strengthen  your  arms,  pardon  your  sins, 
save  your  souls,  and  bless  your  families,  in  the  day  of 
battle.  We  will  also  pray  that  the  same  Lord  of  Hosts 
would  discover  the  counsels,  defeat  the  enterprises,  deride 
the  hopes,  disdain  the  insolencies,  and  wound  the  hairy 
scalps  of  your  obstinate  enemies,  and  yet  pardon  all  that 
are  unwillingly  misled." ' 

III. 

ROGER  WILLIAMS,  never  in  anything  addicted  to  con- 
cealments, has  put  himself  without  reserve  into  .his  writ- 
ings. There  he  still  remains.  There  if  anywhere  we 
may  get  well  acquainted  with  him.  Searching  for  him 
along  the  two  thousand  printed  pages  upon  which  he  has 
stamped  his  own  portrait,  we  seem  to  see  a  very  human 
and  fallible  man,  with  a  large  head,  a  warm  heart,  a  healthy 
body,  an  eloquent  and  imprudent  tongue ;  not  a  symmet- 
rical person,  poised,  cool,  accurate,  circumspect ;  a  man 
very  anxious  to  be  genuine  and  to  get  at  the  truth,  but 
impatient  of  slow  methods,  trusting  gallantly  to  his  own 
intuitions,  easily  deluded  by  his  own  hopes ;  an  imagina- 
tive, sympathetic,  affluent,  impulsive  man  ;  an  optimist ; 
his  master-passion  benevolence  ;  his  mind  clarifying  itself 
slowly;  never  quite  settled  on  all  subjects  in  the  universe; 
at  almost  every  moment  on  the  watch  for  some  new  idea 
about  that  time  expected  to  heave  in  sight;  never  able 
by  the  ordinary  means  of  intellectual  stagnation  to  win 
for  himself  in  his  life-time  the  bastard  glory  of  doctrinal 
consistency  ;  professing  many  things  by  turn  and  nothing 

1  "  The  Simple  Cobbler."  etc.  77. 


242 


HISTORY  OF  AMERICAN   LITERATURE. 


long,  until  at  last,  even  in  mid-life,  he  reached  the  mora\ 
altitude  of  being  able  to  call  himself  only  a  Seeker — in 
which  not  ignoble  creed  he  continued  for  the  remainder 
of  his  days  on  earth. 

It  must  be  confessed  that  there  is  even  yet  in  the  fame 
of  Roger  Williams  a  singular  vitality.  While  living  in 
this  world,  it  was  his  fate  to  be  much  talked  about,  as  well 
as  to  disturb  much  the  serenity  of  many  excellent  peo- 
ple ;  and  the  rumor  of  him  still  agitates  and  divides  men. 
There  are,  in  fact,  some  signs  that  his  fame  is  now  about 
to  take  out  a  new  lease,  and  to  build  for  itself  a  larger 
habitation.  At  any  rate,  the  world,  having  at  last  nearly 
caught  up  with  him,  seems  ready  to  vote — though  with  a 
peculiarly  respectable  minority  in  opposition — that  Roger 
Williams  was  after  all  a  great  man,  one  of  the  true  heroes, 
seers,  world-movers,  of  these  latter  ages. 

Perhaps  one  explanation  of  the  pleasure  which  we  take 
in  now  looking  upon  him,  as  he  looms  up  among  his  con- 
temporaries in  New  England,  may  be  that  the  eye  of 
the  observer,  rather  fatigued  by  the  monotony  of  so  vast 
a  throng  of  sages  and  saints,  all  quite  immaculate,  all 
equally  prim  and  stiff  in  their  Puritan  starch  and  uni- 
form, all  equally  automatic  and  freezing,  finds  a  relief  in 
the  easy  swing  of  this  man's  gait,  the  limberness  of  his 
personal  movement,  his  escape  from  the  paste-board  pro- 
prieties, his  spontaneity,  his  impetuosity,  his  indiscretions, 
his  frank  acknowledgments  that  he  really  had  a  few  things 
yet  to  learn.  Somehow,  too,  though  he  sorely  vexed  the 
souls  of  the  judicious  in  his  time,  and  evoked  from  them 
words  of  dreadful  reprehension,  the  best  of  them  loved 
him ;  for  indeed  this  headstrong,  measureless  man,  with 
his  flashes  of  Welsh  fire,  was  in  the  grain  of  him  a  noble 
fellow;  "a  man,"  as  Edward  Winslow1  said,  "  lovely  in 
his  carriage."  Evidently  he  was  of  a  hearty  and  sociable 
turn,  and  had  the  gift  of  friendship.  Some  of  the  choicest 

1  "  Hypocrisy  Unmasked,"  65. 


ROGER   WILLIAM*.  243 

spirits  of  that  age  were  knit  to  him  in  a  brotherly  way,  par- 
ticularly  the  two  Winthrops,  John  Milton,  and  Sir  Henry 
Vane.  Writing,  in  the  winter  of  1660,  to  the  younger 
Winthrop,  Roger  Williams  says:  "Your  loving  lines  in 
this  cold,  dead  season  were  as  a  cup  of  your  Connecticut 
cider,  which  we  are  glad  to  hear  abounds  with  you,  or  of 
that  western  metheglin  which  you  and  I  have  drunk  at 
Bristol  together."1  Here,  indeed,  was  an  early  New-Eng- 
lander  that  one  could  still  endure  to  have  an  hour  with, 
particularly  at  Bristol ;  in  truth,  a  clubablc  person  ;  a  man 
whose  dignity  would  not  have  petrified  us,  nor  his  saintli- 
ness  have  given  us  a  chill. 

From  his  early  manhood  even  down  to  his  late  old  age, 
Roger  Williams  stands  in  New  England  a  mighty  and 
benignant  form,  always  pleading  for  some  magnanimous 
idea,  some  tender  charity,  the  rectification  of  some  wrong, 
the  exercise  of  some  sort  of  forbearance  toward  men's 
bodies  or  souls.  It  was  one  of  his  vexatious  peculiarities, 
that  he  could  do  nothing  by  halves — even  in  logic.  Hav- 
ing established  his  major  and  his  minor  premises,  he  utter- 
ly lacked  the  accommodating  judgment  which  would  have 
enabled  him  to  stop  there  and  go  no  further  whenever  it 
seemed  that  the  concluding  member  of  his  syllogism  was 
likely  to  annoy  the  brethren.  To  this  frailty  in  his  organiza- 
tion is  due  the  fact  that  he  often  seemed  to  his  contempo- 
raries an  impracticable  person,  presumptuous,  turbulent, 
even  seditious.  This  it  was  that  tainted  somewhat  the 
pleasantness  of  his  relations  with  the  colony  of  Massa- 
chusetts during  his  residence  in  it.  For  example,  he  had 
taken  orders  in  the  established  church  of  England,  but 
had  subsequently  come  to  the  conclusion  that  an  estab- 
lished church  was  necessarily  a  corrupt  organization.  He 
acted  logically.  He  went  out  of  it.  He  would  hold  no 
fellowship  with  it,  even  remotely  or  by  implication.  He 
became  an  uncompromising  Separatist.  Furthermore,  on 

1  Narr.  Club  Pub.  VI.  306. 


244 


HISTORY  OF  AMERICAN   LITERATURE. 


arriving  in  New  England,  the  same  uncomfortable  propen- 
sity was  put  into  action,  by  the  spectacle  of  the  white  men 
helping  themselves  freely  to  the  lands  of  the  red  men,  and 
doing  so  on  pretence  of  certain  titles  derived  from  a  white 
king  on  the  other  side  of  the  Atlantic.  He  was  unable 
to  see  that  even  so  great  a  monarch  as  the  king  of  Eng' 
land  could  give  away  what  did  not  belong  to  him.  To 
Roger  Williams  it  appeared  that  these  lands  actually  be- 
longed to  the  red  men  who  lived  on  them ;  hence,  that  the 
white  men's  titles  to  them  ought  to  come  from  the  red 
men,  and  to  be  the  result  of  a  genuine  and  fair  bargain 
with  the  red  men.  Thus,  he  became  an  assailant  of  the 
validity,  in  that  particular,  of  the  New  England  charters. 
It  happened,  moreover,  that  his  views  in  both  these  di- 
rections constituted  offences,  just  then,  for  the  colony  of 
Massachusetts,  extremely  inopportune  and  inconvenient. 
But  these  were  not  his  only  offences.  Roger  Williams 
also  held  that  it  was  a  shocking  thing — one  of  the  abomi- 
nations of  the  age — for  men  who  did  not  even  pretend  to 
have  religion  in  their  hearts,  to  be  muttering  publicly  the 
words  of  religion  with  their  mouths  ;  and  that  such  per- 
sons ought  not  to  be  called  on  to  perform  any  acts  of  wor- 
ship, even  the  taking  of  an  oath.  Finally,  he  held  another 
doctrine — at  that  time  and  in  that  place  sadly  eccentric 
and  disgusting — that  the  power  of  the  civil  magistrate 
"  extends  only  to  the  bodies  and  goods  and  outward  state 
of  men,"  and  not  at  all  to  their  inward  state,  their  con- 
sciences, their  opinions.  For  these  four  crimes,  particu- 
larly mentioned  by  Governor  Haynes  in  pronouncing  sen- 
tence upon  him,  Massachusetts  deemed  it  unsafe  to  permit 
such  a  nefarious  being  as  Roger  Williams  to  abide  any- 
where within  her  borders. 

With  respect  to  the  sympathy  of  Roger  Williams  with 
the  Indians,  it  concerns  us,  at  present,  to  note  that  it  did 
not  exhaust  itself  in  the  invention  of  a  legal  opinion  on 
their  behalf:  throughout  his  whole  life,  early  and  late,  he 
put  himself  to  much  downright  toil  and  self-denial  for 


ROGER   WILLIAMS. 


245 


their  benefit,  both  in  body  and  in  soul.  He  and  John  Eliot 
had  come  to  New  England  in  the  same  year,  1631 ;  but  at 
least  a  dozen  years  before  John  Eliot  had  entered  upon 
his  apostolic  labors  among  the  Indians,1  Roger  Williams 
had  lodged  "  with  them  in  their  filthy,  smoky  holes  .  .  . 
to  gain  their  tongue,"3  and  had  preached  to  them  in  it. 
"  My  soul's  desire,"  he  said,  "  was  to  do  the  natives 
good." 8  Later,  he  knew  from  his  own  experience,  that  it 
was  possible  for  the  English  to  live  at  peace  with  the 
Indians;  when,  however,  that  peace  was  broken,  though 
he  wished  the  English  to  acquit  themselves  manfully  and 
successfully,  he  evermore  stood  between  them  and  their 
vanquished  foes,  with  words  of  compassion.  In  1637, 
amid  the  exasperation  caused  by  the  Pequot  war,  the  voice 
of  Roger  Williams  was  heard  imploring  the  victors  to 
spare.  "  I  much  rejoice,"  he  writes  to  the  governor  of  Mas- 
sachusetts, "  that  .  .  .  some  of  the  chiefs  at  Connecticut, 
.  .  .  are  almost  adverse  from  killing  women  and  children. 
Mercy  outshines  all  the  works  and  attributes  of  Him  who 
is  the  Father  of  Mercies."4  In  another  letter  he  expresses 
the  hope  that  all  Christians  who  receive  as  slaves  the  sur- 
viving Pequots,  may  so  treat  them  "  as  to  make  mercy 
eminent."8  In  still  another  letter  he  invokes  mercy  upon 
the  miserable  Pequots,  "  since  the  Most  High  delights  in 
mercy,  and  great  revenge  hath  been  already  taken."' 
This,  to  the  end  of  his  life,  was  his  one  cry  in  the  midst 
of  all  storms  of  popular  wrath  and  revenge.7 

And  the  benignity  of  Roger  Williams  was  large  enough 
to  go  out  toward  other  people  than  the  Indians.  His 
letters,  public  and  private,  are  a  proof  that  the  sight  of 
any  creature  in  trouble,  was  enough  to  stir  his  heart  and 
his  hand  for  quick  relief.  His  best  clients  appear  to  have 

1  J.  Hammond  Trumbull,  Pref.  to  R.  W.'s  "  Key."  etc.  3-6. 

»  Quoted  in  J.  D.  Knowles,  "  Mem.  of  R.  W."  109.  *  Ibid.  108. 

•  Narr.  Club  Pub.  VI.  36.  '  Ibid.  8a 

•  Ibid.  87-88.     See  also  34,  35,  44.  47,  54- 

•  Sec  his  noble  letter,  ibid.  269-276. 

10 


246  HISTORY  OF  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

been  those  who  had  no  other  advocate,  and  who  could 
pay  no  fees  :  poor  people  ;  sick  ones  ;  wanderers  ; l  "  the 
dead,  the  widows,  and  the  fatherless;"2  and,  especially, 
all  who  had  been  turned  adrift  for  the  crime  of  having 
an  independent  thought.  Nay,  his  generosity  threw  its 
arms  not  only  around  those  who  were  then  actually  un- 
fortunate, but  even  around  those  who  might  ever  become 
so ;  and  for  them,  too,  he  tried  to  make  tender  provision. 
In  1662,  the  people  of  Providence  resolved  to  divide 
among  themselves  the  lands  that  still  remained  common. 
When  Roger  Williams  heard  of  this,  he  wrote  a  warm- 
hearted and  moving  appeal  to  them,  as  his  "loving  friends 
and  neighbors,"  beseeching  them  that  as  he  first  gave  to 
them  all  the  lands,  so  they  would  permit  some  to  remain 
unappropriated,  as  a  possession  in  reserve  for  such  home- 
less persons  as,  driven  from  any  country  for  conscience' 
sake,  might  thereafter  flee  to  them  for  refuge  :  "  I  ear- 
nestly pray  the  town  to  lay  to  heart,  as  ever  they  look  for 
a  blessing  from  God  on  the  town,  on  your  families,  your 
corn  and  cattle,  and  your  children  after  you,  .  .  .  that  after 
you  have  got  over  the  black  brook  of  some  soul-bondage 
yourselves,  you  tear  not  down  the  bridge  after  you,  by 
leaving  no  small  pittance  for  distressed  souls  that  may 
come  after  you."8 

IV. 

In  the  early  part  of  the  year  1643,  the  four  colonies,  Mas- 
sachusetts Bay,  Plymouth,  Connecticut,  and  New  Haven, 
formed  themselves  into  a  snug  confederacy  called  The 
United  Colonies  of  New  England,  from  which  very  natur- 
ally Rhode  Island  was  excluded, — an  incident  that  re- 
minded the  latter  in  a  lively  way  of  its  perfect  isolation 
among  the  peoples  of  this  earth.  As  it  had  no  recognized 


1  Narr.  Club  Pub.  VI.  212,  213. 

*  Ibid.  208.     See  also  entire  letter,  206-209. 

8  Narr.  Club  Pub.  VI.  318. 


ROGER   WILLIAMS. 


247 


connection  with  its  sister-colonies,  so  it  had  none  with  the 
mother-country.  At  once,  it  resolved  to  procure  for  itself 
such  civic  respectability  as  could  be  conveyed  by  a  char- 
ter from  England ;  and  it  summoned  its  foremost  citizen, 
Roger  Williams,  to  go  thither  and  get  it.  This  command 
he  promptly  obeyed,  taking  ship  that  very  summer,  not 
from  Boston — in  whose  streets  he  was  forbidden  to  set  his 
foot — but  from  the  friendly  Dutch  port  of  New  Amster- 
dam. It  was  upon  this  long  and  leisurely  sea-voyage,  that 
he  composed  his  first  book,  "  A  Key  into  the  Language  of 
America :  or,  An  help  to  the  language  of  the  natives  in 
that  part  of  America  called  New  England,"  which  was , 
given  to  the  press  soon  after  his  arrival  in  London.1  This 
work  is  primarily  a  phrase-book  of  the  language  of  certain 
Indian  tribes  ;  but  it  is  much  more  than  that.  Indeed,  it 
is  a  most  suggestive  and  racy  description  of  those  Indians 
themselves.  Each  chapter  groups  together  the  words  per- 
taining to  some  one  topic ;  with  each  group  of  words  are 
connected  comments,  brief,  pithy,  instructive ;  at  the  end 
of  each  chapter  is  a  series  of  verses  upon  its  prevailing 
topic  ;  and  through  all,  whether  in  verse  or  prose,  runs  a 
gentle  and  liberal  tone,  that  note  of  magnanimity,  compas- 
sion, personal  freedom  and  freshness,  to  be  heard  all  along 
the  life  of  this  man.  For  instance,  at  the  end  of  the  chap- 
ter which  gathers  the  words  of  salutation,  is  this  stanza : 

"If  nature's  sons,  both  wild  and  tame. 

Humane  and  courteous  be, 
How  ill  becomes  it  sons  of  God 
To  want  humanity  !  "  * 

In  the  chapter  giving  the  words  of  entertainment  is  this 
comment :  "  It  is  a  strange  truth  that  a  man  shall  gener- 
ally find  more  free  entertainment  and  refreshing  amongst 
these  barbarians,  than  amongst  thousands  that  call  them- 

1  Reprinted  in  Narr.  Club  Pub.  I.  1-222,  and  there  edited  by  J.  Ham- 
mond Trumbull. 
'  Ibid.  39. 


2^8  HISTORY  OF  AMERICAN  LITERATURE, 

selves  Christians  j"1  and  he  hints  gratefully  at  the  hospii 
tality  he  had  found  among  American  savages  even  when 
he  had  experienced  some  lack  of  it  among  his  own  coun- 
trymen : 

"  God's  providence  is  rich  to  his, 

Let  none  distrustful  be  ; 
In  wilderness,  in  great  distress, 
These  ravens  have  fed  me."  * 

Even  in  a  book  like  this,  he  continually  returns  to  themes 
of  pity,  forbearance,  and  faith,  as  if  these  were  the  chorus 
to  his  own  psalm  of  life  ;  and  he  sees  among  the  wild 
beasts  of  the  American  forests,  some  traits  that  should 
shame  Christians  out  of  their  ferocity  and  meanness: 
"  The  wilderness  is  a  clear  resemblance  of  the  world,  where 
greedy  and  furious  men  persecute  and  devour  the  harm- 
less and  innocent,  as  the  wild  beasts  pursue  and  devour 
the  hinds  and  roes."3  "  The  wolf  is  an  emblem  of  a  fierce, 
blood-sucking  persecutor  ;  the  swine  of  a  covetous,  rooting 
worldling.  Both  make  a  prey  of  the  Lord  Jesus  in  his 
poor  servants."  4 

Upon  reaching  England,  he  of  course  found  the  country 
upheaved  and  aflame  in  civil  war,  John  Hampden  having 
not  long  before  fallen  in  the  fight.  In  such  a  controversy, 
the  sympathy  of  Roger  Williams  could  only  be  with  the 
party  that  stood  for  some  widening  of  human  horizons ; 
and  though  he  never  lost  sight  of  the  particular  business 
that  brought  him  to  England,  it  was  impossible  for  him 
even  there  to  see  so  interesting  a  quarrel  in  progress  and 
not  take  a  hand  in  it.  His  participation  in  the  strife  was 
in  two  ways,  the  one  physical,  the  other  intellectual ;  both 
significant  of  the  humane  and  efficient  nature  of  him. 
First,  as  the  winter  came  on,  the  poor  of  London  began 
to  suffer  for  want  of  fuel,  and  even  to  rise  in  mutiny, — 
the  supply  of  coals  from  Newcastle  having  been  cut  off. 
This  suggested  to  Roger  Williams  something  to  do.  His 

1  "Key,"  etc.  46.  9  Ibid.  46.  J  Ibid.  130.  4  Ibid.  191. 


ROGER   WILLIAMS, 


249 


American  experience  had  taught  him  that  there  were 
several  ways  by  which  men  could  keep  warm  in  an  emer- 
gency ;  and  he  at  once  put  himself  into  the  service  of  par- 
liament for  the  supply  of  firewood  to  the  shivering  folk  of 
the  great  city.  But  the  intellectual  aspects  of  the  contest 
in  England  probably  interested  him  even  more  than  did  its 
physical  ones.  It  grieved  him  to  think  of  men's  bodies 
shivering  with  cold  :  it  grieved  him  far  worse  to  think  of 
their  souls  shivering  with  fear ;  and  doubtless  the  one 
result  that  he  hoped  for  out  of  all  the  havoc  of  those 
times,  was  that  men  would  learn  to  abhor  what  he  called 
the  "  body-killing,  soul-killing,  and  state-killing  doctrine"1 
of  persecuting  one  another  for  their  differences  in  opinion. 
At  last,  this  had  become  his  master-thought.  Even  upon 
the  ocean,  and  while  compiling  a  mere  Indian  vocabulary, 
he  had  been  unable,  as  we  have  seen,  to  keep  this  great 
thought  from  thrusting  itself  forward  among  his  word-lists; 
and  it  happened  that,  so  long  as  he  stayed  in  England, 
there  came  to  him  occasions  for  its  more  explicit  utterance. 
He  had  not  been  a  great  while  upon  shore  when,  oddly 
enough,  there  appeared  in  print,  in  London,  a  letter  which 
the  celebrated  John  Cotton  had  written  to  him  six  years 
before,  adroitly  justifying  the  banishment  of  Roger  Wil- 
liams from  Massachusetts.  This  letter  it  was  fitting  that 
Roger  Williams  should  take  notice  of ;  and  his  notice  of  it 
swiftly  came  in  the  form  of  a  little  book,  called  "  Mr.  Cot- 
ton's Letter  Lately  Printed,  Examined  and  Answered  ; "  * 
a  manly  and  self-restrained  piece  of  work,  giving  frankly 
his  own  side  of  the  story,  emitting  an  occasional  jet  of  in- 
dignation at  the  harshness  of  the  treatment  that  had  been 
visited  upon  him,  and  standing  by  every  one  of  the  ideas 
for  which  he  had  been  driven,  in  midwinter,  from  his 
home  and  friends,  into  the  wilderness :  "  I  .  .  .  hope  that 


1  Narr.  Club  Pub.  I.  328. 

*  First  printed,  London,  1644,  and  reprinted  in  Nan.  Club  Pub.  I.  313- 
396.     Cotton's  "  Letter"  is  also  printed  in  the  same  volume. 


250 


HISTORY  OF  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 


as  I  then  maintained  the  rocky  strength  of  them,  ...  so 
through  the  Lord's  assistance  I  shall  be  ready  for  the  same 
grounds,  not  only  to  be  bound  and  banished,  but  to  die 
also  in  New  England."  l  At  the  very  time  when,  in  both 
Englands,  many  of  the  greatest  divines,  both  among  the 
Congregationalists  and  the  Presbyterians,  were  outspoken 
for  the  suppression  of  heresy  by  force,  denouncing  the 
word  toleration  as  a  word  of  infamy,  Roger  Williams  de- 
clared it  to  be  "  a  monstrous  paradox,  that  God's  children 
should  persecute  God's  children,  and  that  they  that  hope 
to  live  eternally  together  with  Christ  Jesus  in  the  heavens, 
should  not  suffer  each  other  to  live  in  this  common  air  to- 
gether." 2  "  Persecutors  of  men's  bodies,"  he  exclaimed, 
"seldom  or  never  do  these  men's  souls  good."3 

He  had  not  long  finished  his  answer  to  John  Cotton 
when  he  saw  need  to  speak  forth  again.  Standing  in  the 
thick  of  the  strifes  that  then  engaged  all  Englishmen, 
viewing  them  with  his  American  eyes  and  from  his  Ameri- 
can experience,  he  was  able  to  discern,  better  than  most 
Englishmen  could  do,  the  inevitable  drift  of  things,  and  to 
give  resounding  forenotice  of  some  dangers  ahead.  The 
illustrious  Westminster  Assembly  of  Divines  had  been  in 
session  since  July,  1643.  Already  the  Presbyterians  in  it 
had  come  to  hard  blows  with  the  Congregationalists  in  it, 
with  respect  to  the  form  of  church  government  to  be 
erected  in  England  upon  the  ruins  of  the  Episcopacy.  On 
that  subject  Roger  Williams  had  a  very  distinct  opinion. 
While  some  were  for  having  the  new  national  church  of  this 
pattern,  and  others  were  for  having  it  of  that,  Roger  Wil- 
liams boldly  stepped  two  or  three  centuries  ahead  of  his 
age,  and  affirmed  that  there  should  be  no  national  church 

1  Narr.  Club  Pub.  I.  324-325.  where  he  cites  the  four  charges  against  him 
as  summed  up  by  Governor  Haynes.  In  defence  of  Massachusetts  for  its 
treatment  of  Roger  Williams,  all  that  can  be  fairly  urged  by  the  utmost 
learning  and  the  utmost  ingenuity  has  been  urged  by  Henry  Martyn  Dexter, 
in  his  powerful  monograph,  "  As  To  Roger  Williams." 

•  Narr.  Club  Pub.  I.  319.  »  Ibid.  327-328. 


ROGER   WILLIAMS. 


251 


at  all.  Putting  his  arguments  into  the  deferential  form 
of  mere  questions,  he  published,  in  1644,  what  he  called 
"Queries  of  Highest  Consideration."1  The  introduction 
to  this  little  book  is  a  direct  address  to  both  houses  of  par- 
liament, and  speaks  to  them  with  the  noble  Miltonic  accent : 
"  Most  renowned  patriots,  you  sit  at  helm  in  as  great  a 
storm  as  e'er  poor  England's  commonwealth  was  lost  in ; 
yet  be  you  pleased  to  remember  that,  excepting  the  affairs 
...  of  religion,  ...  all  your  consultations,  conclusions, 
executions,  are  not  of  the  quantity  of  the  value  of  one 
poor  drop  of  water.  ...  It  shall  never  be  your  honor, 
to  this  or  future  ages,  to  be  confined  to  the  patterns  of 
either  French,  Dutch,  Scotch,  or  New-English  churches. 
...  If  he  whose  name  is  Wonderful,  Counsellor,  be  con- 
sulted, .  .  .  we  are  confident  you  shall  exceed  the  acts 
and  patterns  of  all  neighbor  nations."  Then,  in  the  book 
itself,  turning  to  the  ecclesiastical  champions  who  con- 
fronted one  another  in  the  Westminster  Assembly,  he 
puts  to  them  twelve  great  questions.  These  questions 
pierce  to  the  core  of  all  ecclesiastical  disputes  then  and 
since  then.  They  contain  the  germs  of  all  truths  that 
go  to  the  erection  upon  this  earth  of  a  majestic  human 
commonwealth,  in  which  all  souls  shall  be  utterly  free. 
Observe  the  foresight  and  the  glorious  audacity  of  this 
seventeenth  century  American  :  "  We  query  where  you 
now  find  one  footstep,  print,  or  pattern,  in  this  doc- 
trine of  the  Son  of  God,  for  a  ...  national  church.  .  .  . 
Again  we  ask,  whether  in  the  constitution  of  a  national 
church  it  can  possibly  be  framed  without  a  racking  and 
tormenting  of  the  souls  as  well  as  of  the  bodies  of  persons. 
...  It  seems  not  possible  to  fit  it  to  every  conscience : 
sooner  shall  one  suit  of  apparel  fit  everybody,  one  law- 
precedent  every  case,  or  one  size  or  last  every  foot.  .  .  . 
Whether  it  be  not  the  cause  of  a  world  of  hypocrites,  the 
soothing  up  of  people  in  a  formal  state-worship  to  the  ruin 

1  Reprinted  in  Narr.  Club  Pub.  II.  241-275. 


252 


HISTORY  OF  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 


of  their  souls,  the  ground  of  persecution  to  Christ  Jesus  in 
his  members,  and  sooner  or  later  the  kindling  of  the  devour- 
ing flames  of  civil  wars.  .  .  .  Since  you  profess  to  want 
more  light,  and  that  a  greater  light  is  yet  to  be  expected, 
...  we  query  how  you  can  profess  and  swear  to  perse- 
cute all  others  as  schismatics,  heretics,  and  so  forth,  that 
believe  they  see  a  further  light,  and  dare  not  join  with 
either  of  your  churches.  .  .  .  Whether  ...  it  be  not  a 
true  mark  ...  of  a  false  church  to  persecute  ;  it  being  the 
nature  only  of  a  wolf  to  hunt  the  lambs  and  sheep,  but 
impossible  for  a  lamb  or  sheep,  or  a  thousand  flocks  of 
sheep  to  persecute  one  wolf.  .  .  .  Whether  there  can  pos- 
sibly be  expected  the  least  look  of  peace  in  these  fatal 
distractions  and  tempests  raised,  but  by  taking  counsel  of 
the  greatest  and  wisest  politician  that  ever  was,  the  Lord 
Jesus  Christ."  1 

All  this,  of  course,  was  stark  and  dreadful  heresy ;  but  it 
was  heresy  for  which  Roger  Williams  had  already  suffered 
loss  and  pain,  and  was  prepared  to  suffer  more.  What- 
ever were  the  faults  of  this  man,  indifference  to  the  sacred 
prerogatives  of  personality  was  not  among  them.  He 
could  not  bear  the  weight  of  any  fetters  upon  his  own 
soul ;  and  the  spectacle  of  them  upon  any  other  soul,  filled 
him  with  pity  and  great  wrath.  Very  likely  in  his  early 
manhood  he  had  been,  both  in  speech  and  deed,  hot,  pre- 
cipitate, destructive.  But,  for  him,  time,  meditation,  sor- 
row, solitude,  the  presence  of  nature,  a  larger  acquaintance 
with  mankind,  had  been  doing  their  work,  chastening  and 
mellowing  him  ;  and  though  nothing  could  quench  the  fire 
of  his  spirit,  or  tame  him  into  a  safe,  calculating,  and  conven- 
tional person, — pulling  judiciously  in  any  regulation-traces, 
— he  had  certainly  grown  in  patience,  and  in  the  justice 
which  patience  gives.  Above  all,  however,  his  nature  had 
become  absolutely  clear  in  its  adjustment  of  certain  grand 
ideas,  of  which  the  chief  was  soul-liberty.  On  behalf  of 

1  Narr.  Club  Pub.  II.  264-274. 


ROGER   WILLIAMS,  253 

that  idea,  having  now  an  opportunity  to  free  his  mind, 
he  resolved  to  do  so,  keeping  nothing  back ;  and  accord- 
ingly, almost  upon  the  heels  of  the  little  book  that  has 
just  been  mentioned,  he  sent  out  another — not  a  little  one  ; 
a  book  of  strong,  limpid,  and  passionate  argument,  glorious 
for  its  intuitions  of  the  world's  coming  wisdom,  and  in  its 
very  title  flinging  out  defiantly  a  challenge  to  all  comers. 
He  called  it  "  The  Bloody  Tenet  of  Persecution  for  Cause 
of  Conscience."  ! 

This  book,  which  had  two  editions  within  its  first  year, 
and  quickly  attained  the  honor  of  martyrdom  in  the  flames 
of  a  Presbyterian  auto-da-fe,  was  written,  the  author  tells 
us,  while  he  was  busy  with  his  task  of  procuring  fuel  for 
the  poor  of  London, "  in  change  of  rooms  and  corners,  yea 
sometimes  ...  in  variety  of  strange  houses,  sometimes 
in  the  fields,  in  the  midst  of  travel ;  where  he  hath  been 
forced  to  gather  and  scatter  his  loose  thoughts  and  pa- 
pers." It  is  a  treatise  in  the  form  of  a  dialogue,  the  inter- 
locutors being  two  angelic  and  sorrowful  fugitives,  Truth 
and  Peace,  who,  after  long  separations  and  friendless  wan- 
derings over  the  earth,  have  at  last  met  in  some  dusky  cor- 
ner of  it,  where  they  confer  together  mournfully  over  those 
errors  and  passions  which  blind  men,  and  fill  the  world 
with  tumult  and  misery.  The  conversation  between  these 
heavenly  personages  goes  forward  at  great  length,  and 
covers  the  entire  field  of  the  doctrine  of  intellectual  free- 
dom. In  the  very  year  in  which  this  book  was  published, 
in  London,  John  Milton  likewise  gave  to  the  public,  in  the 
same  place,  his  majestic  plea  for  soul-liberty,  "  Areopa- 
gitica ; "  but  even  Milton's  vision  of  this  sublime  truth  had 
not  then  acquired  the  breadth  and  clearness  with  which  it 
was  revealed  to  Roger  Williams.  Milton  asks  only  that 
"  many  be  tolerated  rather  than  all  be  compelled,"  and 
immediately  suggests  this  fatal  limitation  :  "  I  mean  not 

1  First   published.  London,   1644.     Reprinted  in    Narr.   Club  Pub.   Ill 
'-425. 


254 


HISTORY  OF  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 


tolerated  Popery  and  open  superstition,  which  as  it  extir- 
pates all  religions  and  civil  supremacies,  so  itself  should  be 
extirpate."  1  How  much  nobler  and  more  spacious  is  the 
declaration  of  Roger  Williams  !  "  It  is  the  will  and  com- 
mand of  God,  that  ...  a  permission  of  the  most  Pagan- 
ish, Jewish,  Turkish,  or  Antichristian  consciences  and  wor- 
ships, be  granted  to  all  men,  in  all  nations  and  countries  ; 
and  they  are  only  to  be  fought  against  with  that  sword 
which  is  only,  in  soul-matters,  able  to  conquer,  to  wit,  the 
sword  of  God's  Spirit,  the  word  of  God."  2 

It  may  be  that  this  great  work  had  not  even  passed 
from  the  hands  of  the  printer,  when  the  author  of  it, 
having  fully  accomplished  the  business  that  brought  him 
to  England,  had  set  out  upon  his  return  to  Rhode  Island, 
where  he  arrived  in  the  autumn  of  1644.  His  book,  hav- 
ing likewise  set  out  upon  its  travels,  reached  in  due  time 
the  library  of  John  Cotton,  and  stirred  him  up  to  make  a 
reply,  which  was  published  in  London  in  1647,  and  which 
bore  a  title  reverberating  that  given  by  Roger  Williams 
to  his  book :  "  The  Bloody  Tenet  washed  and  made 
white  in  the  Blood  of  the  Lamb."  Cotton's  book  quickly 
found  Roger  Williams,  at  his  home  in  Rhode  Island,  and 
of  course  aroused  him  to  write  a  rejoinder.  This  he  sent 
to  England  for  publication  ;  but  it  did  not  get  into  print 
until  his  own  second  visit  there,  in  1652.  Its  title  is  a  re- 
iteration of  that  given  to  his  former  work,  and  is  likewise 
a  characteristic  retort  upon  the  modification  of  it  made  by 
his  antagonist :  "  The  Bloody  Tenet  yet  more  Bloody,  by 
Mr.  Cotton's  Endeavor  to  wash  it  white  in  the  Blood  of 
the  Lamb."  3 

As  usual,  this  book  has  several  prefaces.  The  first  one, 
addressed  "  to  the  most  honorable,  the  parliament  of  the 
commonwealth  of  England,"  is  written  with  great  power. 
It  is  a  magnificent  and  soul-stirring  appeal,  a  noble  chant 


1  "  Areopagitica,"  Arber's  ed.  76.  *  Narr.  Club  Pub.  III. 

3  Reprinted  in  Narr.  Club  Pub.  IV.  1-547. 


ROGER   WILLIAMS.  255 

of  spiritual  liberty,  an  overture  in  sonorous  word-music  to 
the  mighty  strain  that  rolls  stormily  through  the  book,  an 
invocation  to  the  rulers  of  England  to  practise  the  mag- 
nanimity of  a  complete  enfranchisement  of  human  souls 
within  all  the  realms  swayed  by  their  authority:  "  O  ye,  the 
prime  of  English  men  and  English  worthies,  whose  senses 
have  so  oft  perceived  the  everlasting  arms  of  the  invincible 
and  eternal  King,  when  your  ship's  hold  hath  been  full  with 
water,  yea  with  blood,  .  .  .  when  she  hath  beaten  upon  some 
rocky  hearts  and  passages  as  if  she  would  have  staved  and 
split  into  a  thousand  pieces.  Yet  this  so  near  .  .  .  foun- 
dered, sinking  nation,  hath  the  God  of  heaven,  by  your  most 
valiant  and  careful  hands,  brought  safe  to  peace,  her  har- 
bor. Why,  now,  should  any  duty  possible  be  impossible  ? 
Yea,  why  not  impossibilities  possible  ?  Why  should  your 
English  seas  contend  with  a  neighbor  Dutchman,  for  the 
motion  of  a  piece  of  silk,  .  .  .  and  not  ten  thousand  fold 
much  more  your  English  spirits  with  theirs,  for  the  crown 
of  that  state-piety  and  wisdom  which  may  make  your  faces 
more  to  shine,  .  .  .  with  a  glory  far  transcending  all  your 
fairest  neighbors'  copies.  The  States  of  Holland,  having 
smarted  deeply  and  paid  so  dearly  for  the  purchase  of 
their  freedoms,  reach  to  ...  the  world  a  taste  of  such  of 
their  dainties.  And  yet  (with  due  reverence  to  so  wise  a 
state  and  with  due  thankfulness  for  mercy  and  relief  to 
many  poor  oppressed  consciences)  I  say,  their  piety  nor 
policy  could  ever  yet  reach  so  far,  nor  could  they  in  all 
their  school  of  war  .  .  .  learn  that  one  poor  lesson  of  setting 
absolutely  the  consciences  of  all  men  free.  .  .  .  But  why 
should  not  such  a  parliament  as  England  never  had  .  .  . 
outshoot  and  teach  their  neighbors,  by  framing  a  safe  com- 
munication of  freedom  of  conscience  in  worship,  even  to 
.  .  .  the  Papists  and  Arminians  themselves  ?  .  .  .  The 
Pope,  the  Turk,  the  King  of  Spain,  the  Emperor,  and  the 
rest  of  persecutors,  build  among  the  eagles  and  the  stars ; 
yet,  while  they  practise  violence  to  the  souls  of  men  and 
make  their  swords  of  steel  corrivals  with  the  two-edged 


256  HISTORY  OF  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

spiritual  sword  of  the  Son  of  God,  the  basis  of  their  high- 
est pillars,  the  foundation  of  their  glorious  palaces  are  but 
dross  and  rottenness.  And  however,  in  our  poor  arith- 
metic, their  kingdoms'  number  seem  great,  yet  in  the  only 
wise  account  of  the  Eternal,  their  ages  are  but  minutes, 
and  their  short  periods  are  near  accomplished.  .  .  .  But 
light  from  the  Father  of  Lights  hath  shined  on  your  eyes, 
mercy  from  the  Father  of  Mercies  hath  softened  your 
breasts,  to  be  tender  of  the  tenderest  part  of  man,  his  con- 
science." l 

This  book  is  the  most  powerful  of  the  writings  of 
Roger  Williams.  Its  range  of  topics  is  dictated  by  the 
line  of  discussion  adopted  by  John  Cotton.  There  are 
three  principal  matters  argued  in  it, — the  nature  of  per- 
secution, the  limits  of  the  power  of  the  civil  sword,  and 
the  tolerance  already  granted  by  parliament.  Like  its 
author's  previous  book,  this  work  has  an  abundance  of  lit- 
erary faults.  It  conforms  to  the  manner  of  the  controver- 
sial prose  of  the  seventeenth  century :  its  sentences  are 
often  involved,  lumbering,  diffuse ;  it  is  entirely  lacking  in 
reticence ;  it  defies  proportion  ;  it  moves  onward  and  on- 
ward in  unpruned  and  boundless  loquacity  ;  eternity  seems 
not  long  enough  for  the  entire  perusal  of  it.  Nevertheless, 
here  also  are  some  of  the  best  qualities  that  can  be  in  a 
book:  ripeness  of  judgment,  uttermost  sincerity,  all-con- 
suming earnestness,  the  inspiration  of  being  in  the  right 
and  of  knowing  it,  the  rebound  of  a  strong,  generous,  and 
brilliant  nature  against  the  thrusts  of  an  able  antagonist. 
Here,  in  a  most  benign  service,  are  ample  erudition,  logic, 
imagination,  noble  emotion,  humor,  pathos,  sarcasm,  invec- 
tive, torrents  of  eager  and  irresistible  speech.  The  closing 
passage  of  this  book  is,  at  once,  the  summary  and  the  cli- 
max of  all  the  argument  and  passion  that  have  enlightened 
and  kindled  its  pages  :  a  stately,  an  appalling  arraignment, 
before  the  tribunal  of  divine,  angelic,  and  human  reason,  of 

1  Narr.  Club  Pub.  IV.  9-13. 


ROGER    WILLIAMS.  257 

the  doctrine  of  persecution.  Having  now,  against  that 
doctrine,  argued  the  case  in  full,  and  from  every  point  of 
view ;  having  proved  it  to  be  heavy  and  accursed  with  the 
weight  of  every  impolicy  and  of  every  crime,  the  author 
seems  to  gather  up  all  his  powers  of  thought,  feeling,  and 
utterance  for  one  final  onset ;  and  he  proceeds  to  hurl  upon 
the  tenet,  which  he  execrates,  these  fierce,  crashing  sen- 
tences .^'  And  for  myself,  I  must  proclaim  before  the  most 
holy  God,  angels,  and  men,  that  ...  yet  this  is  a  foul,  a 
black,  and  a  bloody  tenet ;  a  tenet  of  high  blasphemy 
against  the  God  of  peace,  the  God  of  order,  who  hath  of 
one  blood  made  all  mankind  to  dwell  upon  the  face  of  the 
earth ;  "y  .  .  a  tenet  warring  against  the  Prince  of  Peace, 
Christ  Jesus;  ...  a  tenet  fighting  against  the  sweet  end 
of  his  coming,  which  was  not  to  destroy  men's  lives  for 
their  religions,  but  to  save  them ;  .  .  .  a  tenet  lamentably 
guilty  of  his  most  precious  blood,  shed  in  the  blood  of  so 
many  hundred  thousand  of  his  poor  servants  by  the  civil 
powers  of  the  world,  pretending  to  suppress  blasphemies, 
heresies,  idolatries,  superstition,  and  so  forth  ;  a  tenet  fight- 
ing against  the  spirit  of  love,  holiness,  and  meekness,  by 
kindling  fiery  spirits  of  false  zeal  and  fury ;  .  .  .  a  tenet 
against  which  the  blessed  souls  under  the  altar  cry  aloud 
for  vengeance,  this  tenet  having  cut  their  throats,  torn 
out  their  hearts,  and  poured  forth  their  blood,  in  all  ages, 
as  the  only  heretics  and  blasphemers  in  the  world  ;  a  tenet, 
which  no  uncleanness,  no  adultery,  incest,  sodomy,  or  bes- 
tiality can  equal, — this  ravishing  and  forcing  .  .  .  the  very 
souls  and  consciences  of  all  the  nations  and  inhabitants  of 
the  world ;  .  .  v  a  tenet  loathsome  and  ugly  .  .  .  with  the 
palpable  filths  of  gross  dissimulation  and  hypocrisy ;  .  .  .  a 
tenet  that  fights  against  the  common  principles  of  all  civil- 
ity, and  the  very  civil  being  and  combinations  of  men  .  .  t 
by  commixing  ...  a  spiritual  and  civil  state  together^) 
...  a  tenet  that  kindles  the  devouring  flames  of  combus- 
tions and  wars  in  most  nations  of  the  world  ;  .  .  .  a  tenet 
all  besprinkled  with  the  bloody  murders,  stabs,  poisonings, 


25g  HISTORY  OF  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

pistollings,  powder-plots,  and  so  forth,  against  many  famous 
kings,  princes,  and  states ;  .  .  .  a  tenet  all  red  and  bloody 
with  those  most  barbarous  and  tigerlike  massacres  of  so 
many  thousand  and  ten  thousands,  formerly  in  France  and 
other  parts,  and  so  lately  and  so  horribly  in  Ireland ;  .  .  . 
a  tenet  that  stunts  the  growth  and  flourishing  of  the  most 
likely  and  hopefulest  commonweals  and  countries  .... 
a  tenet  that  corrupts  and  spoils  the  very  civil  honesty  and 
natural  conscience  of  a  nation  ;  since  conscience  to  God, 
violated,  proves,  without  repentance,  ever  after  a  very  jade, 
a  drug,  loose  and  unconscionable  in  all  converse  with  men  ; 
lastly,  a  tenet  in  England  most  unseasonable,  as  pouring 
oil  upon  those  flames  which  the  high  wisdom  of  the  parlia- 
ment, by  easing  the  yokes  on  men's  consciences,  had  begun 
to  quench.  In  the  sad  consideration  of  all  which,  ...  let 
heaven  and  earth  judge  of  the  washing  and  color  of  this 
tenet.  .  .  .  For  me,  ...  I  must  profess,  while  heaven 
and  earth  lasts,  that  no  one  tenet  that  either  London, 
England,  or  the  world,  doth  harbor,  is  so  heretical,  bias, 
phemous,  seditious,  and  dangerous,  to  the  corporal,  to  the 
spiritual,  to  the  present,  to  the  eternal  good  of  men,  as 
the  bloody  tenet  (however  washed  and  whited)  ...  of 
persecution  for  cause  of  conscience."  J 

With  Roger  Williams,  the  mood  for  composition  seems 
to  have  come  in  gusts.  His  writings  are  numerous;  but 
they  were  produced  spasmodically  and  in  clusters,  amid 
long  spaces  of  silence.  He  is  known  to  have  written  two 
or  three  works  which  were  never  printed  at  all,  and  which 
are  now  lost.  In  1652,  during  his  second  visit  to  Eng- 
land, he  published,  in  addition  to  his  rejoinder  to  John 
Cotton,  two  small  treatises,  "The  Hireling  Ministry  None 
of  Christ's,"  and  "  Experiments  of  Spiritual  Life  and 
Health."  From  that  time,  no  book  of  his  was  given  to 
the  press  until  the  year  1676,  when  he  published  at  Boston 
a  quarto  volume  of  nearly  three  hundred  and  fifty  pages, 


Narr.  Club  Pub.  IV.  493~5Oi. 


259 

embodying  his  own  report  of  a  series  of  stormy  public 
debates,  which  he  had  held  in  Rhode  Island,  not  long  be- 
fore, with  certain  robust  advocates  of  Quakerism.  This 
book  bears  a  punning  title, "  George  Fox  digged  out  of  his 
Burrows."1  By  his  contemporaries,  it  was  read  with  in- 
tense interest ;  and  it  is  interesting  still,  at  least  for  its 
many  local  and  personal  allusions,  and  as  an  authentic 
and  unpleasant  memorial  of  the  anger,  the  barbarous  dis- 
courtesy, the  vituperation,  with  which  in  those  ages  even 
kindly  men  engaged  in  intellectual  controversy.2  Most 
readers  nowadays,  who  may  find  themselves  by  chance 
near  this  huge  book,  will  gaze  down  into  it  for  a  moment 
as  into  some  vast  tank  into  which  have  poured  the  drip- 
pings of  a  furious  religious  combat  in  the  olden  time, — 
theological  nick-names,  blunt-headed  words  of  pious  abuse, 
devout  scurrilities,  the  rancid  vocabulary  of  Puritan  bil- 
lingsgate, that  diction  of  hearty  and  expressive  dislike 
which  Roger  Williams  himself  pleasantly  described  as 
"  sharp  Scripture  language."  * 

Besides  those  of  his  writings  that  were  intended  for 
books,  there  are  many  in  the  form  of  letters,  some  ad- 
dressed to  the  public,  most  of  them  to  his  personal  friends. 
In  these  letters,4  which  cover  his  whole  life  from  youth  to 
old  age,  we  seem  to  get  very  near  to  the  man  himself. 
They  are  upon  all  sorts  of  subjects,  often  hurriedly  writ- 
ten, always  cheerful,  seldom  mirthful;  they  are  full  of 
urbanity,  tenderness,  generosity ;  they  show  an  habitual 
upwardness  of  mental  movement ;  they  grow  rich  in  all 
gentle,  gracious,  and  magnanimous  qualities  as  the  years 
increase  upon  him.  Especially  do  they  please  us  by  the 
tokens  they  furnish  of  the  noble  friendships  that  he  was 


1  Reprinted  in  Narr.  Club  Pub.  V.  1-503. 

*  Think  of  the  controversial  writings  of  such  true-souled  gentlemen  as  Sir 
Thomas  More  and  John  Milton. 

'  For  examples  of  his  energetic  candor  see  Narr.  Club  Pub.  V.  84,  193, 
•03,  226,  227.  233,  243,  366,  417,  491. 

4  Many  of  them  are  given  in  Narr.  Club  Pub.  VI.  1-420. 


26o  HISTORY  OF  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

capable  of.  His  letters  to  the  younger  Winthrop  are 
peculiarly  affable  and  tender ;  nowhere  else  in  his  writ- 
ings do  we  meet  so  many  passages  of  benediction  and 
aspiration,  sweet,  brief  phrases  of  comfort.  In  one  letter 
he  begins  with  this  greeting:  "  Best  respects  and  love  pre- 
sented to  yourself  and  dearest."1  In  another  he  says: 
"Above  the  sun  is  our  rest,  in  the  Alpha  and  Omega  of 
all  blessedness,  unto  whose  arms  of  everlasting  mercy  I 
commend  you."2  In  another  he  says:  "This  instant  be- 
fore sunrise  as  I  went  to  my  field,"  I  met  "  an  Indian 
running  back  for  a  glass,  bound  for  your  parts ;  "  I  use 
him  to  carry  "  this  hasty  salutation  to  your  kind  self  and 
dear  companion."3  In  another  letter  to  the  same  friend, 
is  preserved  an  amusing  reminiscence  both  of  his  familiar 
and  thoughtful  friendliness,  and  of  a  certain  imperious 
domestic  necessity  that  civilization  has  at  last  succeeded 
in  making  us  unconscious  of :  "  Sir,  hearing  want  of  pins, 
I  crave  Mrs.  Winthrop's  acceptance  of  two  small  papers, 
that,  if  she  want  not  herself,  she  may  pleasure  a  neigh- 
bor." 4 

The  letters  of  Roger  Williams  also  show  that,  to  the 
very  end  of  his  days,  he  kept  his  mind  open  and  alert 
to  nearly  all  that  was  passing  among  men,  at  home  and 
abroad,  especially  in  wars,  politics,  and  divinity.  Even 
more  vividly  than  in  his  books,  we  see  in  them  likewise 
the  habits  of  his  mind  in  the  grasp  and  expression  of 
thought.  His  was  not  a  dry,  hard,  or  acute  mind,  but 
sensitive,  imaginative,  comprehensive,  with  great  fertility 
of  ideas,  moved  by  energies  rushing  into  it  from  the  heart. 
Evidently  he  had  no  objections  to  laughter,  but  the  humor 
of  his  letters  is  of  the  lurking  and  delicate  kind  ;  as  when 
he  says  that  Prince  Rupert  was  one  "  whose  name  in  these 
parts  sounds  as  a  north-east  snow-storm," 5  or  when  he  de- 
scribes his  friend  Gregory  Dexter  as  "  an  intelligent  man 


1  Narr.  Club  Pub.  VI.  200.  *  Ibid.  174.  3  Ibid.  319. 

*  Ibid.  200.  «  Narr.  Club  Pub.  VI.  197-198. 


ROGER    WILLIAMS.  26l 

.  .  .  and  conscionable  (though  a  Baptist)."1  All  his  writ- 
ings, and  especially  his  letters,  abound  in  quotable  sen- 
tences, masses  of  thought  heaved  to  the  surface  by  its  own 
natural  action  :  "  Better  an  honorable  death  than  a  slave's 
life."8  "  I  fear  not  so  much  iron  an  1  steel  as  the  cutting 
of  our  throats  with  golden  knives."  8  "  Oh,  how  sweet  is 
a  dry  morsel  and  a  handful,  with  quietness  from  earth 
and  heaven."  *  "  The  counsels  of  the  Most  High  are  deep 
concerning  us  poor  grasshoppers  hopping  and  skipping 
from  branch  to  twig  in  this  vale  of  tears."  5  In  the  moral 
perspectives  of  life  he  has  some  notable  sayings.  He 
speaks  of  "the  vain  and  empty  puff  of  all  terrene  pro- 
motions;"6 and  of  "  that  life  which  is  eternal  when  this 
poor  minute's  dream  is  over."  7  "  Alas,  sir,  in  calm  mid- 
night thoughts,  what  are  these  leaves  and  flowers,  and 
smoke  and  shadows,  and  dreams  of  earthly  nothings,  about 
which  we  poor  fools  and  children,  as  David  saith,  disquiet 
ourselves  in  vain."8  "In  my  poor  span  of  time,  I  have 
been  oft  in  the  jaws  of  death,  sickening  at  sea,  shipwrecked 
on  shore,  in  danger  of  arrows,  swords,  and  bullets ;  and  yet, 
methinks,  the  most  high  and  most  holy  God  hath  reserved 
me  for  some  service  to  his  most  glorious  and  eternal  maj- 
esty." ' 

Finally,  he  conceived  truth  in  its  concrete  forms ;  his 
propositions  were  often  uttered  in  images ;  he  could  settle 
a  long  debate  by  the  authority  of  a  luminous  comparison. 
A  noble  example  of  this  habit  of  his  mind,  is  that  cele- 
brated letter  to  the  people  of  Providence,  written  by  him, 
in  1655,  as  President  of  Rhode  Island,  with  the  purpose  of 
correcting  a  perversion,  just  then  attempted,  of  his  own 
strong  championship  of  soul-liberty:  "There  goes  many 
a  ship  to  sea,  with  many  hundred  souls  in  one  ship,  whose 
weal  and  woe  is  common,  and  is  a  true  picture  of  a  com* 

1  Narr.  Club  Pub.  VI.  332.  •  Ibid.  15.  •  Ibid.  15. 

4  Ibid.  165.  •  Ibid.  158-159.  '  Ibid.  101. 

f  Ibid.  242.  •  Ibid.  343.  •  Ibid.  242. 


262  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

monwealth  or  a  human  combination  or  society.  It  hath 
fallen  out  sometimes  that  both  Papists  and  Protestants, 
Jews  and  Turks,  may  be  embarked  in  one  ship ;  ijpon 
which  supposal  I  affirm,  that  all  the  liberty  of  conscience 
that  ever  I  pleaded  for,  turns  upon  these  two  hinges — that 
none  of  the  Papists,  Protestants,  Jews,  or  Turks,  be  forced 
to  come  to  the  ship's  prayers  or  worship,  nor  compelled 
from  their  own  particular  prayers  or  worship,  if  they  prac- 
tise any.  I  further  add,  that  I  never  denied  that,  notwith- 
standing this  liberty,  the  commander  of  this  ship  ought  to 
command  the  ship's  course,  yea,  and  also  command  that  jus- 
tice, peace,  and  sobriety,  be  kept  and  practised,  both  among 
the  seamen  and  all  the  passengers.  If  any  of  the  seamen 
refuse  to  perform  their  services,  or  passengers  to  pay  their 
freight ;  if  any  refuse  to  help,  in  person  or  purse,  toward 
the  common  charges  or  defence ;  if  any  refuse  to  obey 
the  common  laws  and  orders  of  the  ship,  concerning  their 
common  peace  or  preservation  ;  if  any  shall  mutiny  and 
rise  up  against  their  commanders  and  officers;  if  any  should 
preach  or  write  that  there  ought  to  be  no  commanders  or 
officers,  because  all  are  equal  in  Christ,  therefore  no  mas- 
ters nor  officers,  no  laws  nor  orders,  nor  corrections,  nor 
punishments  ; — I  say,  I  never  denied,  but  in  such  cases, 
whatever  is  pretended,  the  commander  or  commanders 
may  judge,  resist,  compel,  and  punish  such  transgressors, 
according  to  their  deserts  and  merits.  This,  if  seriously 
and  honestly  minded,  may,  if  it  so  please  the  Father  of 
Lights,  let  in  some  light  to  such  as  willingly  shut  not  their 
eyes.  I  remain,  studious  of  your  common  peace  and  lib- 
erty, Roger  Williams."  l 

The  supreme  intellectual  merit  of  this  composition  is  in 
those  very  qualities  that  never  obtrude  themselves  upon 
notice — ease,  lucidity,  completeness.  Here  we  have  the 
final  result  of  ages  of  intellectual  effort,  presented  without 
effort  a  long  process  of  abstract  reasoning  made  trans- 

'Narr.  Club  Pub.  VI.  278-279. 


ROGER    WILLIAMS.  263 

parent  and  irresistible  in  a  picture.  With  a  wisdom  that  is 
both  just  and  peaceable,  it  fixes,  for  all  time,  the  barriers 
against  tyranny  on  the  one  side,  against  lawlessness  on  the 
other.  It  has  the  moral  and  literary  harmonies  of  a  classic. 
As  such,  it  deserves  to  be  forever  memorable  in  our  Ameri- 
can prose.1 

1  Two  years  after  the  first  publication  of  this  book,  a  long-lost  tract  by 
Roger  Williams,  entitled  "  Christenings  Make  Not  Christians,"  London, 
1645,  was  discovered  by  Henry  Martyn  Dexter  in  the  library  of  the  British 
Museum,  where,  having  been  bound  together  with  eight  or  ten  other  pam- 
phlets, it  had  somehow  escaped  being  catalogued.  In  1881,  this  noble-hearted 
monograph,  along  with  certain  letters  of  Williams  believed  to  have  been  pre- 
viously unpublished,  was  printed  as  No.  14  of  the  "  Rhode  Island  Historical 
Tracts."  An  important  contribution  to  the  study  of  the  position  of  Roger 
Williams  in  the  development  of  American  civilization,  has  been  made  by 
Oscar  S.  Straus,  in  his  "  Roger  Williams  the  Pioneer  of  Religious  Liberty," 
New  York,  1894. 


CHAPTER   X. 

NEW   ENGLAND:   THE  VERSE-WRITERS. 

I. — The  altitude  of  Puritanism  toward  Art — Especially  toward  Poetry — The 
unextinguished  poetry  in  Puritanism. 

II. — The  Puritans  of  New  England  universally  addicted  to  versification — 
The  mirth  of  their  elegies  and  epitaphs — The  poetical  expertness  of  Pastor 
John  Wilson. 

III. — The  pleasant  legend  of  William  Morrell — His  poem  in  Latin  and  Eng- 
lish on  New  England. 

IV. — The  prodigy  of  "  The  Bay  Psalm  Book  " — Its  Reverend  fabricators — 
Their  conscientious  mode  of  proceeding— A  book  fearfully  and  wonder- 
fully made. 

V. — Anne  Bradstreet  the  earliest  professional  poet  of  New  England — First 
appearance  of  her  book — Her  career — Her  prose  writings — Her  training 
for  poetry — Her  guides  and  masters  the  later  euphuists  in  English  verse 
— List  of  her  poetical  works — Analysis  of  "The  Four  Elements" — 
"  The  Four  Monarchies  " — The  fundamental  error  in  her  poetry — Her 
"  Contemplations" — The  first  poet  of  the  Merrimac — Her  devout  poems 
— Her  allusions  to  contemporary  politics — Her  championship  of  women 
— Final  estimate- 

I. 

A  HAPPY  surprise  awaits  those  who  come  to  the  study 
of  the  early  literature  of  New  England  with  the  expecta- 
tion of  finding  it  altogether  arid  in  sentiment,  or  void  of 
the  spirit  and  aroma  of  poetry.  The  New-Englander  of 
the  seventeenth  century  was  indeed  a  typical  Puritan  ;  and 
it  will  hardly  be  said  that  any  typical  Puritan  of  that  cen- 
tury was  a  poetical  personage.  In  proportion  to  his  devo- 
tion to  the  ideas  that  won  for  him  the  derisive  honor  of 
his  name,  was  he  at  war  with  nearly  every  form  of  the 
beautiful.  He  himself  believed  that  there  was  an  inap- 
peasable  feud  between  religion  and  art ;  and  hence,  the 
duty  of  suppressing  art  was  bound  up  in  his  soul  with  the 

264 


POETRY  AND  PURITANISM,  26$ 

master-purpose  of  promoting  religion.  He  cultivated  the 
grim  and  the  ugly.  He  was  afraid  of  the  approaches  of 
Satan  through  the  avenues  of  what  is  graceful  and  joyous. 
The  principal  business  of  men  and  women  in  this  world 
seemed  to  him  to  be  not  to  make  it  as  delightful  as  pos- 
sible, but  to  get  through  it  as  safely  as  possible.  By  a 
whimsical  and  horrid  freak  of  unconscious  Manichaeism, 
he  thought  that  whatever  is  good  here  is  appropriated  to 
God,  and  whatever  is  pleasant,  to  the  devil.  It  is  not 
strange  if  he  were  inclined  to  measure  the  holiness  of  a 
man's  life  by  its  disagreeableness.  In  the  logic  and  fury 
of  his  tremendous  faith,  he  turned  away  utterly  from 
music,  from  sculpture  and  painting,  from  architecture, 
from  the  adornments  of  costume,  from  the  pleasures  and 
embellishments  of  society  ;  because  these  things  seemed 
only  "  the  devil's  flippery  and  seduction  "  to  his  "  ascetic 
soul,  aglow  with  the  gloomy  or  rapturous  mysteries  of  his 
theology."1  Hence,  very  naturally,  he  turned  away  like- 
wise from  certain  great  and  splendid  types  of  literature, — 
from  the  drama,  from  the  playful  and  sensuous  verse  of 
Chaucer  and  his  innumerable  sons,  from  the  secular  prose 
writings  of  his  contemporaries,  and  from  all  forms  of 
modern  lyric  verse  except  the  Calvinistic  hymn. 

Nevertheless,  the  Puritan  did  not  succeed  in  eradicating 
poetry  from  his  nature.  Of  course,  poetry  was  planted 
there  too  deep  even  for  his  theological  grub-hooks  to  root 
it  out.  Though  denied  expression  in  one  way,  the  poetry 
that  was  in  him  forced  itself  into  utterance  in  another. 
If  his  theology  drove  poetry  out  of  many  forms  in  which 
it  had  been  used  to  reside,  poetry  itself  practised  a  noble 
revenge  by  taking  up  its  abode  in  his  theology.  His  su- 
preme thought  was  given  to  theology ;  and  there  he  nour- 
ished his  imagination  with  the  mightiest  and  sublimest 
conceptions  that  a  human  being  can  entertain — concep- 
tions of  God  and  man,  of  angels  and  devils,  of  Providence 

1  E.  C.  Stedman,  "Victorian  Poets,"  12. 


266  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

and  duty  and  destiny,  of  heaven,  earth,  hell.  Though  he 
stamped  his  foot  in  horror  and  scorn  upon  many  exquisite 
and  delicious  types  of  literary  art ;  stripped  society  of  all 
its  embellishments,  life  of  all  its  amenities,  sacred  archi- 
tecture of  all  its  grandeur,  the  public  service  of  divine 
worship  of  the  hallowed  pomp,  the  pathos  and  beauty  of 
its  most  reverend  and  stately  forms ;  though  his  prayers 
were  often  a  snuffle,  his  hymns  a  dolorous  whine,  his  ex- 
temporized liturgy  a  bleak  ritual  of  ungainly  postures  and 
of  harsh  monotonous  howls ;  yet  the  idea  that  filled  and 
thrilled  his  soul  was  one  in  every  way  sublime,  immense, 
imaginative,  poetic — the  idea  of  the  awful  omnipotent 
Jehovah,  his  inexorable  justice,  his  holiness,  the  incon- 
ceivable brightness  of  his  majesty,  the  vastness  of  his 
unchanging  designs  along  the  entire  range  of  his  relations 
with  the  hierarchies  of  heaven,  the  principalities  and 
powers  of  the  pit,  and  the  elect  and  the  reprobate  of  the 
sons  of  Adam.  How  resplendent  and  superb  was  the 
poetry  that  lay  at  the  heart  of  Puritanism,  was  seen  by 
the  sightless  eyes  of  John  Milton,  whose  great  epic  is  in- 
deed the  epic  of  Puritanism.1 


II. 

Turning  to  Puritanism  as  it  existed  in  New  England, 
we  may  perhaps  imagine  it  as  solemnly  declining  the 
visits  of  the  Muses  of  poetry,  sending  out  to  them  the 
blunt  but  honest  message — '  Otherwise  engaged.'  Noth- 
ing could  be  further  from  the  truth.  Of  course,  Thalia, 
and  Melpomene,  and  Terpsichore  could  not  under  any  pre- 
tence have  been  admitted  ;  but  Polyhymnia — why  should 
not  she  have  been  allowed  to  come  in  ?  especially  if  she 
were  willing  to  forsake  her  deplorable  sisters,  give  up  her 
pagan  habits,  and  submit  to  Christian  baptism.  Indeed, 

1  Taine,  "  Hist.  Eng.  Lit."  I.  420,  calls  it  "the  Protestant  epic  of  damna- 
tion and  grace." 


POETRY  IN  NEW  ENGLAND.  26/ 

the  Muse  of  New  England,  whosoever  that  respectable 
damsel  may  have  been,  was  a  muse  by  no  means  exclu- 
sive ;  such  as  she  was,  she  cordially  visited  every  one  who 
would  receive  her, — and  every  one  would  receive  her.  It 
is  an  extraordinary  fact  about  these  grave  and  substantial 
men  of  New  England,  especially  during  our  earliest  lit- 
erary age,  that  they  all  had  a  lurking  propensity  to  write 
what  they  sincerely  believed  to  be  poetry, — and  this,  in 
most  cases,  in  unconscious  defiance  of  the  edicts  of  nature 
and  of  a  predetermining  Providence.  Lady  Mary  Mon- 
tagu said  that  in  England,  in  her  time,  verse-making  had 
become  as  common  as  taking  snuff:  in  New  England,  in 
the  age  before  that,  it  had  become  much  more  common 
than  taking  snuff — since  there  were  some  who  did  not 
take  snuff.  It  is  impressive  to  note,  as  we  inspect  our 
first  period,  that  neither  advanced  age,  nor  high  office, 
nor  mental  unfitness,  nor  previous  condition  of  respecta- 
bility, was  sufficient  to  protect  any  one  from  the  poetic 
vice.  We  read  of  venerable  men,  like  Peter  Bulkley,  con- 
tinuing to  lapse  into  it  when  far  beyond  the  grand  climac- 
teric. Governor  Thomas  Dudley  was  hardly  a  man  to  be 
suspected  of  such  a  thing ;  yet  even  against  him  the  evi- 
dence must  be  pronounced  conclusive :  some  verses  in  his 
own  handwriting  were  found  upon  his  person  after  his 
death.  Even  the  sage  and  serious  governor  of  Plymouth 
wrote  ostensible  poems.  The  renowned  pulpit-orator, 
John  Cotton,  did  the  same ;  although,  in  some  instances, 
he  prudently  concealed  the  fact  by  inscribing  his  English 
verses  in  Greek  characters  upon  the  blank  leaves  of  his 
almanac.  Here  and  there,  even  a  town-clerk,  placing  on 
record  the  deeply  prosaic  proceedings  of  the  selectmen, 
would  adorn  them  in  the  sacred  costume  of  poetry.  Per- 
haps, indeed,  all  this  was  their  solitary  condescension  to 
human  frailty.  The  earthly  element,  the  passion,  the  car- 
nal taint,  the  vanity,  the  weariness,  or  whatever  else  it  be 
that,  in  other  men,  works  itself  off  in  a  pleasure-journey, 
in  a  flirtation,  in  going  to  the  play,  or  in  a  convivial  bout, 


268  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

did  in  these  venerable  men  exhaust  itself  in  the  sly  dissi- 
pation of  writing  verses.  Remembering  their  unfriendly 
attitude  toward  art  in  general,  this  universal  mania  of 
theirs  for  some  forms  of  the  poetic  art — this  unrestrained 
proclivity  toward  the  "  lust  of  versification  " — must  seem 
to  us  an  odd  psychological  freak.  Or,  shall  we  rather 
say  that  it  was  not  a  freak  at  all,  but  a  normal  effort  of 
nature,  which,  being  unduly  repressed  in  one  direction, 
is  accustomed  to  burst  over  all  barriers  in  another ;  and 
that  these  grim  and  godly  personages  in  the  old  times 
fell  into  the  intemperance  of  rhyming,  just  as  in  later 
days,  excellent  ministers  of  the  gospel  and  gray-haired 
deacons,  recoiling  from  the  sin  and  scandal  of  a  game  at 
billiards,  have  been  known  to  manifest  an  inordinate  joy 
in  the  orthodox  frivolity  of  croquet  ?  As  respects  the 
poetry  which  was  perpetrated  by  our  ancestors,  it  must 
be  mentioned  that  a  benignant  Providence  has  its  own 
methods  of  protecting  the  human  family  from  intolerable 
misfortune;  and  that  the  most  of  this  poetry  has  per- 
ished. Enough,  however,  has  survived  to  furnish  us  with 
materials  for  everlasting  gratitude,  by  enabling  us  in  a 
measure  to  realize  the  nature  and  extent  of  the  calamity 
which  the  divine  intervention  has  spared  us. 

It  will  be  natural  for  us  to  suppose  that,  at  any  rate, 
poetry  in  New  England  in  the  seventeenth  century  could 
not  have  been  a  Gaya  Sciencia,  as  poetry  was  called  in  Pro- 
vence in  the  thirteenth  century.1  Even  this,  however,  is 
not  quite  correct ;  for  no  inconsiderable  part  of  early  New 
England  poetry  has  a  positively  facetious  intention, — that 
part,  namely,  which  consists  of  elegies  and  epitaphs.  Our 
ancestors  seem  to  have  reserved  their  witticisms  princi- 
pally for  tombstones  and  funerals.  When  a  man  died, 
his  surviving  friends  were  wont  to  conspire  together  to 
write  verses  upon  him — and  these  verses  often  sparkled 
with  the  most  elaborate  and  painful  jests.  Thus,  in  1647, 

1  Geo.  Ticknor,  "  Hist.  Spanish  Lit."  I.  103. 


POETRY  IN  NEW  ENGLAND.  269 

upon  the  death  of  the  renowned  Thomas  Hooker  of  Hart- 
ford, his  colleague  in  the  pastorate,  Samuel  Stone,  wrote 
to  an  eminent  minister  in  Massachusetts  certain  words  of 
grave  and  cautious  suggestion  :  "  You  may  think  whether 
it  may  not  be  comely  for  you  and  myself  and  some  other 
elders,  to  make  a  few  verses  for  Mr.  Hooker,  and  transcribe 
them  in  the  beginning  of  his  book.  I  do  but  propound 
it."1  The  appeal  was  effectual;  and  when,  a  few  years 
later,  it  came  Samuel  Stone's  turn  to  depart  this  life,  those 
who  outlived  him  rendered  to  his  memory  a  similar  ser- 
vice, his  name  furnishing  an  unusually  pleasant  opportu- 
nity for  those  ingenuities  of  allusion  and  those  literary 
quirks  and  puns  that  were  then  thought  to  be  among 
the  graces  of  a  threnody.  Thus,  the  deceased  brother 

was 

"  A  stone  more  than  the  Ebenezer  famed  ; 
Stone,  splendent  diamond,  right  orient  named  ; 
A  cordial  stone,  that  often  cheered  hearts 
With  pleasant  wit,  with  gospel  rich  imparts; 
Whetstone,  that  edgified  the  obtusest  mind  ; 
Loadstone,  that  drew  the  iron  heart  unkind  ; 
A  ponderous  stone,  that  would  the  bottom  sound 
Of  Scripture  depths,  and  bring  out  arcans  found; 
A  stone  for  kingly  David's  use  so  fit, 
As  would  not  fail  Goliath's  front  to  hit ; 
A  stone,  an  antidote,  that  brake  the  course 
Of  gangrene  error  by  convincing  force  ; 
A  stone  acute,  fit  to  divide  and  square  ; 
A  squared  stone  became  Christ's  building  rare."1 

The  death  of  Samuel  Danforth,  of  Roxbury,  occurred 
just  after  that  excellent  person  had  preached  through  the 
Gospel  of  St.  Luke  in  course,  and  also  just  after  a  new  and 

1  The  entire  letter  in  W.  B.  Sprague,  "  Annals  of  Am.  Pulpit,"  I.  35. 

'  Part  of  "  AThrenodia  upon  our  churches'  second  dark  eclipse,  happening 
July  20,  1663,  by  death's  interposition  between  us  and  that  great  light  and 
divine  plant,  Mr.  Samuel  Stone,  late  of  Hartford,  in  New  England,"  pre- 
served in  Morton,  "  New  England's  Memorial,"  302-3.  The  poem  is  signed 
"  E.  B.,M  and  is  attributed  to  Edward  Bulkley,  son  of  Peter  Bulkley  of  Con- 
cord. 


2/0 


HISTORY  OF  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 


more  spacious  meeting-house  had  been  erected  by  his 
congregation, —  interesting  personal  items  which  found 
their  appropriate  mention  in  his  epitaph  : 

"Our  minds  with  gospel  his  rich  lectures  fed; 
Luke  and  his  life  at  once  are  finished, 
Our  new-built  church  now  suffers  too  by  this, 
Larger  its  windows,  but  its  lights  are  less."1 

Connecticut  had  for  one  of  its  early  governors  the  gen- 
erous Edward  Hopkins,  as  a  proof  of  whose  devoutness  it 
is  recorded  that  his  prayers  were  so  fervent  "  that  he  fre- 
quently fell  a  bleeding  at  the  nose,  through  the  agony  of 
spirit  with  which  he  labored  in  them."2  After  his  death, 
an  epitaph  was  written  upon  him,  in  which  his  glorious 
resurrection  is  predicted  in  this  spirited  legal  metaphor: 

"  But  Heaven,  not  brooking  that  the  earth  should  share 
In  the  least  atom  of  a  piece  so  rare, 
Intends  to  sue  out,  by  a  new  revise, 
His  habeas  corpus  at  the  grand  assize."3 

In  the  year  1668,  there  died  in  Cambridge  "  that  super- 
eminent  minister  of  the  gospel,  Mr.  Jonathan  Mitchell," 
and  upon  his  "  deplored  death  "  the  following  epitaph  was 
composed : 

"  Here  lies  the  darling  of  his  time, 

Mitchell  expired  in  his  prime; 

Who  four  years  short  of  forty-seven, 

Was  found  full  ripe  and  plucked  for  heaven; 

Was  full  of  prudent  zeal  and  love, 

Faith,  patience,  wisdom  from  above; 

New  England's  stay,  next  age's  story, 

The  churches'  gem,  the  college  glory. 

Angels  may  speak  him — ah  !  not  I, — 

Whose  worth's  above  hyperbole. 

But  for  our  loss,  wer't  in  my  power, 

I'd  weep  an  everlasting  shower."4 

'"Magnalia,"  II.  62.  *  Ibid.  I.  145.  »Ibid.  148. 

4  In  Morton,  "  New  England's  Memorial,"  341,  signed  "  J.  S.,"  supposed 
to  be  either  Joshua  Scottow,  or  the  Rev.  John  Sherman  of  Watertown. 


WILLIAM  MORRELL. 


271 


Of  all  the  manufacturers  of  this  kind  of  verse,  probably 
no  one,  in  that  period,  displayed  an  alacrity  and  perse- 
verance equal  to  John  Wilson,  the  first  pastor  of  Boston, 
who,  as  Cotton  Mather  says,  "  had  so  nimble  a  faculty  of 
putting  his  devout  thoughts  into  verse,  that  he  signalized 
himself  by  ...  sending  poems  to  all  persons,  in  all  places, 
on  all  occasions,  .  .  .  wherein  if  the  curious  relished  the 
piety,  sometimes,  rather  than  the  poetry,  the  capacity  of  the 
most  therein  to  be  accommodated  must  be  considered."  f 
He  was  matchless  in  skill  to  detect  allegories,  to  invent 
anagrams,  to  work  out  acrostics,  and  to  twist  puns  and 
conceits  into  consolatory  verses  on  mournful  occasions ;  and 
these  verses,  steadfastly  held  to  be  poetry,  were  cherished 
as  sacred  by  the  recipients,  even  as  were  "  the  handker- 
chiefs carried  from  Paul  to  uphold  the  disconsolate."*  It 
was  most  fitting  therefore  that  these  shining  poetic  ser- 
vices of  the  faithful  pastor  should  be  remembered  by  the 
poet,  who,  after  John  Wilson's  death,  sought  to  embalm  his 
memory  in  some  congenial  verses,  and  who  addressing 
New  England  exclaims : 

"  this  father  will  return  no  more 
To  sit  the  moderator  of  thy  sages. 
But  tell  his  zeal  for  thee  to  after  ages, 
His  care  to  guide  his  flock  and  feed  his  lambs 
By  words,  works  prayers,  psalms,  alms,  and  anagrams."  * 

III. 

Over  the  early  literary  annals  of  New  England,  there 
hovers  one  poetic  reminiscence,  very  slight,  perhaps,  and 
dim,  but  altogether  gracious,  and  worthy  of  being  saved 
from  fading  into  entire  forgetfulness.  It  is  of  the  pres- 
ence among  our  ancestors,  for  a  little  while,  of  a  noble- 
minded  clergyman  of  the  English  Church,  an  accomplished 

1  "Magnalia,"  I.  302. 

*  This  comparison  is  by  John  Wilson's  son,  "  Magnolia,"  I.  303. 

'  "  Magnalia,"  I.  320. 


272 


HISTORY  OF  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 


scholar,  a  pleasant  Christian  gentleman,  William  Morrell, 
who  came  to  live  in  New  England  in  1623,  with  the  colony 
under  Captain  Robert  Gorges,  at  Wessagusset,  and  who 
abode  in  that  colony  during  its  brief  and  unfortunate 
existence.  Upon  the  failure  of  the  enterprise  that  had 
brought  him  hither,  William  Morrell,  who  had  in  fact 
come  armed  with  a  commission  to  exercise  a  superintend- 
ency  over  the  churches  which  should  be  established  in 
New  England,  went  to  the  little  village  of  Plymouth;  and 
dwelt  there  quietly  for  a  whole  year  among  the  Pilgrims ; 
he,  the  English  churchman,  holding  genial  fellowship  with 
those  peaceful  separatists,  and  courteously  forbearing  even 
to  mention  to  them  his  commission  until  he  was  upon 
the  point  of  leaving  them.  He  was  a  gentle,  meditative, 
brotherly  man ;  and  while  living  among  them,  he  spent 
his  time  chiefly  in  studying  New  England — the  coun- 
try, the  climate,  the  white  people  and  the  Indians,  and 
in  writing  an  elaborate  Latin  poem  upon  the  subject.1 
This  poem,  entitled  "  Nova  Anglia,"  was  published  by  him 
in  London,  in  1625,  the  Latin  text  being  accompanied  by 
a  version,  in  English  rhymed  pentameters,  done  by  him- 
self. He  wrote  good  Oxford  Latin  of  the  period,  and  in 
versification  that  is  blameless.  His  English  rendering  of 
his  own  Latin,  is  less  a  translation  than  a  wide  and  wan- 
dering paraphrase  of  it ;  having  some  felicities  here  and 
there,  but  in  the  main  clumsy  and  tuneless.  He  was 
an  Englishman  having  the  accomplishment,  not  unusual 
among  scholars  in  that  time,  of  being  more  expert  in  the 
dead  language  of  Rome  than  in  the  living  language  of 
his  own  country ;  for  which,  probably,  he  had  to  thank 
his  English  university,  then  contemptuous  of  everything 
English  in  language  and  in  literature.  He  introduces  his 
poem  by  an  address  to  the  reader,  which  at  least  has  the 
grace  of  literary  humility  and  of  entire  accuracy  of  judg- 
ment : 

1  Reprinted  in  i  Mass.  Hist.  Soc.  Coll.  I.  125-139. 


WILLIAM  MORRELL.  2/3 

"  If  thou,  Apollo,  hold'st  thy  sceptre  forth 
To  these  harsh  numbers,  that's  thy  royal  worth. 
Vain  is  all  search  in  these  to  search  that  vein 
Whose  stately  style  is  great  Apollo's  strain. 
Minerva  ne'er  distilled  into  my  muse 
Her  sacred  drops  ;  my  pomace  wants  all  juice. 
My  muse  is  plain,  concise  ;  her  fame's  to  tell 
In  truth  and  method.     Love  or  leave.     Farewell.1* 

At  the  opening  of  the  poem,  one  finds  this  not  unpleas- 
ant description  of  New  England  : 

"  Fear  not.  poor  muse,  'cause  first  to  sing  her  fame, 
That's  yet  scarce  known,  unless  by  map  or  name  ; 
A  grand-child  to  earth's  paradise  is  born, 
Well-limb'd,  well-nerv'd,  fair,  rich,  sweet,  yet  forlorn. 
Thou  blest  director,  so  direct  my  verse 
That  it  may  win  her  people,  friends,  commerce  ; 
Whilst  her  sweet  air,  rich  soil,  blest  seas,  my  pen 
Shall  blaze,  and  tell  the  natures  of  her  men. 

Westward  a  thousand  leagues,  a  spacious  land 
Is  made,  unknown  to  them  that  it  command, 
Of  fruitful  mould,  and  no  less  fruitless  main, 
Inrich  with  springs  and  prey,  highland  and  plain  ; 
The  light,  well-tempered,  humid  air,  whose  breath 
Fills  full  all  concaves  betwixt  heaven  and  earth. 
So  that  the  region  of  the  air  is  blest 
With  what  earth's  mortals  wish  to  be  possessed." 

He  thus  proceeds  to  give,  at  considerable  length,  a  series 
of  pictures — somewhat  lacking  in  distinctness  and  color — 
of  the  climate  and  productions  of  the  country,  of  its  recent 
inhabitants,  and  more  particularly  of  the  Indians.  The 
poem  culminates  in  an  impassioned  appeal  for  Christian 
pity  and  help,  on  behalf  of  these  dark-minded  savages, 
whose  nature 

"  Retains  not  one  poor  sparkle  of  true  light ;  " 

and  in  view  of  their  inevitable  doom  unless  rescued  by 
Christian  intervention,  he  utters  this  sorrowful  cry  : 
18 


274  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITER  A  TURE. 

"And  now  what  soul  dissolves  not  into  tears, 
That  hell  must  have  ten  thousand  thousand  heirs, 
Which  have  no  true  light  of  that  truth  divine, 
Or  sacred  wisdom  of  the  eternal  Trine  !  " 

His  closing  lines,  which  express  the  author's  modest  but 
very  noble  purpose  in  writing  the  poem,  leave  with  us  an 
impression  of  the  lovableness  and  benignity  of  his  heart, 
and  especially  of  his  generous  compassion  for  the  rude  and 
neglected  land  beyond  the  western  ocean,  where  he  had 
thus  dwelt  for  a  time  a  gentle  and  friendly  spectator: 

Si  mea  barbaricae  prosint  conamina  genti  ; 
Si  valet  Anglicanis  incompta  placere  poesis, 
Et  sibi  perfaciles  hac  reddere  gente  potentes, 
Assiduosque  pios  sibi  persuadere  colonos  ; 
Si  doceat  primi  vitam  victumque  parentis  ; 
Angli  si  fuerint  Indis  exempla  beate 
Vivendi,  capiant  quibus  ardua  limina  coeli  ; 
Omnia  succedunt  votis  ;  modulamina  spero 
Haec  mea  sublimis  luerint  praesagia  regni. 

His  English  version  of  these  lines  is  much  closer  to  the 
original  than  is  usual  with  him,  and  is  by  no  means  des- 
picable as  poetry : 

"  If  these  poor  lines  may  win  this  country  love, 
Or  kind  compassion  in  the  English  move, 
Persuade  our  mighty  and  renowned  state 
This  poor  blind  people  to  commiserate, 
Or  painful  men  to  this  good  land  invite, 
Whose  holy  works  these  natives  may  inlight ; 
If  heaven  grant  these,  to  see  here  built,  I  trust, 
An  English  kingdom  from  this  Indian  dust." 


IV. 

There  has  descended  to  us  from  our  first  literary  period 
one  very  considerable  specimen  of  English  verse,  "  The 
Bay  Psalm  Book,"  which  will  be  forever  memorable  among 
us  as  a  sort  of  prodigy  in  that  kind, — a  poetic  phenome- 


THE  BA  Y  PSALM  BOOK. 


275 


non,  happily  unique,  we  may  hope,  in  all  the  literatures 
of  English  speech.  This  portentous  metrical  fabric  was 
the  joint  production  of  "the  chief  divines  in  the  country,"1 
each  of  whom  took  a  separate  portion  of  the  original  He- 
brew for  translation  ;  the  workmen  most  conspicuous  in 
the  sacred  job  being  Thomas  VVelde,  John  Eliot,  and  Rich- 
ard Mather.  To  the  one  last  named  was  also  assigned 
the  duty  of  writing  a  preface  for  the  work,  in  order  to  ex- 
plain and  commend  to  the  churches  the  achievement  which 
had  been  thus  prepared  for  their  edification.  This  pref- 
ace is  a  characteristic  bit  of  Puritan  prose,  very  Hebraic  in 
learning,  very  heroic  in  conscientiousness,  sharp  and  mi- 
nute in  opinion,  quaint  in  phrase.  Of  course,  he  had  to 
deal  with  the  question,  then  somewhat  disturbing,  whether 
the  Psalms  should  be  sung  "  in  their  own  words  or  in  such 
words  as  English  poetry  is  wont  to  run  into  ;  "  and  of 
course,  he  establishes  the  propriety  of  the  latter  method. 
But  in  thus  turning  the  Psalms  of  David  into  verses 
"which,"  as  he  rather  hesitantly  puts  it,  "are  commonly 
called  metrical,"  "  it  hath  been  one  part  of  our  religious 
care  and  faithful  endeavor  to  keep  close  to  the  original 
text.  ...  If,  therefore,  the  verses  are  not  always  so  smooth 
and  elegant  as  some  may  desire  or  expect,  let  them  con- 
sider that  God's  altar  needs  not  our  polishings,  for  we 
have  respected  rather  a  plain  translation  than  to  smooth 
our  verses  with  the  sweetness  of  any  paraphrase ;  and  so 
have  attended  conscience  rather  than  elegance,  fidelity 
rather  than  poetry."  The  work  thus  accurately  described, 
was  published  at  Cambridge,  Massachusetts,  in  1640, — the 
first  book  in  English,  probably,  that  ever  issued  from  any 
printing-press  in  America. a  It  is  entitled  "  The  Whole 
Book  of  Psalms,  faithfully  translated  into  English  Metre," 
and  undoubtedly  deserves  the  preeminence  conceded  to  it 

'"  Magnalia,"  I.  407. 

•The  first  book,  not  the  first  printed  production.  "The  Freeman's 
Oath  "  was  the  first ;  an  almanac  was  the  second  ;  both  in  1639.  Next 
came  "  The  Bay  Psalm  Book."  Thomas,  "  Hist.  Printing  in  Am."  I.  46. 


276 


HISTORY  OF  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 


by  John  Nichol,1  of  being  "  the  worst  of  many  bad."  In 
turning  over  these  venerable  pages,  one  suffers  by  sym- 
pathy something  of  the  obvious  toil  of  the  undaunted 
men  who,  in  the  very  teeth  of  nature,  did  all  this ;  and 
whose  appalling  sincerity  must,  in  our  eyes,  cover  a  multi- 
tude of  such  sins,  as  sentences  wrenched  about  end  for  end, 
clauses  heaved  up  and  abandoned  in  chaos,  words  disem- 
bowelled or  split  quite  in  two  in  the  middle,  and  dissonant 
combinations  of  sound  that  are  the  despair  of  such  poor 
vocal  organs  as  are  granted  to  human  beings.  The  verses, 
indeed,  seem  to  have  been  hammered  out  on  an  anvil,  by 
blows  from  a  blacksmith's  sledge.  Everywhere  in  the 
book,  is  manifest  the  agony  it  cost  the  writers  to  find  two 
words  that  would  rhyme — more  or  less ;  and  so  often  as 
this  arduous  feat  is  achieved,  the  poetic  athlete  appears  to 
pause  awhile  from  sheer  exhaustion,  panting  heavily  for 
breath.  Let  us  now  read,  for  our  improvement,  a  part  of 
the  Fifty-Eighth  Psalm  : 

"  The  wicked  are  estranged  from 

the  womb,  they  goe  astray 
as  soone  as  ever  they  are  borne; 

uttering  lyes  are  they. 
Their  poyson's  like  serpents  poyson: 

they  like  deafe  Aspe,  her  eare 
that  stops.     Though  Charmer  wisely  charme, 

his  voice  she  will  not  heare. 
Within  their  mouth  doe  thou  their  teeth 

break  out,  o  God  most  strong, 
doe  thou  Jehovah,  the  great  teeth 

break  of  the  lions  young." 

It  is  pathetic  to  contemplate  the  tokens  of  intellectual 
anxiety  scattered  along  these  pages  ;  the  prolonged  baf- 
fling, perspiration,  and  discouragement  which  these  good 
men  had  to  pass  through,  in  order  to  overcome  the  metrical 
problems  presented,  for  example,  by  the  Fifty-First  Psalm  : 

1  In  Encyc.  Brit,  gth  ed.  I.  720. 


ANNE  BRADSTREET. 

"  Create  in  mee  cleane  heart  at  last 

God  :  a  right  spirit  in  me  new  make. 
Nor  from  thy  presence  quite  me  cast. 

thy  holy  spright  not  from  me  take. 
Mee  thy  salvations  joy  restore, 

and  stay  me  with  thy  spirit  free. 
I  will  transgressors  teach  thy  lore, 

and  sinners  shall  be  turned  to  thec."* 


V. 

It  will  not  be  difficult  for  the  reader  to  believe  that  the 
examples  of  early  American  verse  that  have  now  been  laid 
before  him,  were  the  productions  of  persons  whom  it  is 
a  charity  to  call  amateurs  in  the  art  of  poetry.  There 
was,  however,  belonging  to  this  primal  literary  period,  one 
poet  who,  in  some  worthy  sense,  found  in  poetry  a  voca- 
tion. The  first  professional  poet  of  New  England  was  a 
woman. 

In  the  year  1650, — a  full  twelvemonth  after  the  head  of 
Charles  the  First  had  fallen  upon  the  block  in  front  of  his 
palace  at  Whitehall,  the  very  year  in  which  Oliver  Crom- 
well was  giving  to  the  Presbyterian  Scots  on  the  field  of 
Dunbar  a  strong  dose  of  English  Congregationalism, — 
there  was  published,  in  London,  a  book  of  poems  written 
by  a  gifted  young  woman  of  the  New  England  wilderness, 
Anne  Bradstreet  by  name.  This  book  bore  one  of  those 
fantastic  and  long-winded  title-pages,  at  once  a  table  of 
contents  and  a  printer's  puff,  that  the  literary  folk  of  the 
sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries  greatly  delighted  in. 
It  reads  thus :  "  The  Tenth  Muse  lately  sprung  up  in 
America ;  or,  Several  Poems,  compiled  with  great  variety 
of  wit  and  learning,  full  of  delight ;  wherein  especially  is 
contained  a  complete  discourse  and  description  of  the  four 
elements,  constitutions,  ages  of  man,  seasons  of  the  year; 

1  The  specimens  here  given  of  "  The  Bay  Psalm  Book,"  I  take  from  the 
copy  of  the  first  edition  once  owned  by  Thomas  Prince,  and  now  in  the 
Boston  Public  Library. 


2^8  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITER  A  TURE. 

together  with  an  exact  epitome  of  the  four  monarchies, 
viz.,  the  Assyrian,  Persian,  Grecian,  Roman  ;  also,  a  dia- 
logue between  Old  England  and  New  concerning  the  late 
troubles ;  with  divers  other  pleasant  and  serious  poems. 
By  a  gentlewoman  in  those  parts.  Printed  at  London,  for 
Stephen  Bowtell,  at  the  sign  of  the  Bible,  in  Pope's  Head 
Alley,  1650."  l 

Perhaps  that  year,  1650,  was  not  the  friendliest  yearthat 
could  be  imagined  for  any  Tenth  Muse  to  get  the  atten- 
tion of  the  world,  even  though  she  had  "  lately  sprung  up 
in  America,"  and  even  though  the  poems  she  sang  were 
"  compiled  With  great  variety  of  wit  and  learning,  full  of 
delight."  Not  the  Muses,  one  would  say,  but  rather  the 
Furies  had  the  field  just  then  ;  and  the  dulcet  notes  of  any 
gentle  word-music  had  little  chance  of  being  heard,  amid 
the  universal  din  of  the  crashing  footsteps  of  Mars  strid- 
ing angrily  up  and  down  the  island,  while,  in  the  pauses 
of  his  wrathful  spasms,  the  politicians  were  bent  on  fill- 
ing the  air  with  their  clamorous  and  sullen  jargon.  But 
whether  the  time  were  fortunate,  or  otherwise,  for  the  pub- 
lication of  Anne  Bradstreet's  poems,  not  greatly  did  it 
concern  Anne  Bradstreet  herself,  far  away  from  London  in 
her  rustic  mansion,  amid  the  picturesque  hills  and  rough 
woods  of  Andover,  and  within  sound  of  the  murmurs  of 
the  Merrimac. 

She  was  born  in  England,  in  1612.  Her  father,  Thomas 
Dudley,  an  austere  Puritan,  a  man  of  much  study  and 
stern  will,  had  settled  down,  after  some  military  experi- 
ence, as  steward  of  the  estates  of  the  Puritan  nobleman, 
the  Earl  of  Lincoln.  It  was  while  he  was  in  that  respon- 
sible service,  that  his  brilliant  young  daughter  passed  some 
of  her  girlhood  in  the  earl's  castle  of  Sempringham  ;  and 
we  may  not  doubt  that  a  mind  so  eager  for  knowledge  as 


1  The  entire  works  of  Anne  Bradstreet,  in  prose  and  verse,  edited  by  John 
Harvard  Ellis,  were  published  in  sumptuous  form  at  Charlestown,  Mass.,  in 
1867  ;  to  which  volume  I  refer  in  the  present  chapter. 


ANNE  BRADSTREET. 


279 


was  hers,  made  high  festival  over  the  various  treasures  of 
books  that  were  gathered  there.  In  the  year  1628,  when 
she  had  reached  the  age  of  sixteen,  she  married  the  man 
in  whose  loving  and  grave  companionship  she  passed  the 
remainder  of  her  life,  Simon  Bradstreet,  nine  years  older 
than  herself,  of  a  good  family  in  Suffolk,  a  graduate  of 
Emmanuel  College,  Cambridge,  educated  to  business  by 
her  own  father,  a  man  of  Puritan  faith  and  demeanor, 
God-fearing,  and  fearing  no  man.  Two  years  later,  the 
young  people  joined  the  great  company  of  wealthy  and 
cultivated  Puritans  who  sailed  away  to  New  England, 
where,  thenceforward,  Simon  Bradstreet  steadily  advanced 
in  importance,  and  came  to  take  a  great  part  in  matters  of 
church  and  state,  living  out  a  long  career  there  as  colonial 
secretary,  judge,  legislator,  governor,  ambassador,  and 
royal  councillor,  dying  at  last  in  great  honor,  at  the  great 
age  of  ninety-four,  the  white-haired  and  wise-tongued  Nes- 
tor of  the  Puritan  commonwealth. 

This  coming  away  from  old  England  to  New  England 
was,  for  many  of  these  wealthy  emigrants,  a  sad  sacrifice 
of  taste  and  personal  preference ;  and  for  none  of  them, 
probably,  was  it  more  so  than  for  this  girl-wife,  Anne 
Bradstreet,  who,  with  a  scholar's  thirst  for  knowledge,  and 
a  poet's  sensitiveness  to  the  elegant  and  the  ugly,  would 
have  delighted  in  the  antique  richness  and  the  mellow 
beauty  of  English  life,  as  much  as  she  recoiled  from  the 
savage  surroundings,  the  scant  privileges,  the  crude,  real- 
istic, and  shaggy  forms  of  society  in  America.  "  After  a 
short  time,"  she  says  in  an  autobiographic  sketch,  "  I 
changed  my  condition  and  was  married,  and  came  into 
this  country,  where  I  found  a  new  world  and  new  man- 
ners, at  which  my  heart  rose.  But  after  I  was  convinced 
it  was  the  way  of  God,  I  submitted  to  it."  *  But  though 
she  thus  submitted  to  her  fate,  the  effort  was  one  that 
had  to  be  ever-renewed  ;  and  in  her  own  writings,  as  in 

1  Works  of  Anne  Bradstreet,  5. 


28O  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

the  writings  of  her  contemporaries,  one  hears,  between  the 
lines,  the  plaintive  cry  of  their  consciousness  of  being,  for 
a  sacred  duty  and  by  God's  unmistakable  will,  in  a  remote 
exile  : 

"  Remember,  Lord,  thy  folk,  whom  thou 
To  wilderness  hast  brought."  ' 

It  took  several  years  for  her  husband  and  herself  to 
find  their  way  to  their  permanent  home  ;  but  in  1644,  af- 
ter many  settlements,  they  settled  finally  near  Andover, 
where,  upon  a  farm  which  is  still  pointed  out  as  the  Brad- 
street  farm,  amid  noble  and  inspiring  natural  scenery,  and 
within  the  distance  of  only  a  mile  and  a  quarter  from  the 
Merrimac,  she  passed  the  remainder  of  her  life,  dying  in 
1672,  at  the  age  of  sixty. 

So,  whatever  work  this  writer  wrought,  whether  good  or 
bad,  she  wrought  in  the  midst  of  circumstances  that  did 
not  altogether  help  her,  but  hindered  her  rather.  She  was 
the  laborious  wife  of  a  New  England  farmer,  the  mother 
of  eight  children,  and  herself  from  childhood  of  a  delicate 
constitution.  The  most  of  her  poems  were  produced  be- 
tween 1630  and  1642,  that  is,  before  she  was  thirty  years 
old ;  and  during  these  years,  she  had  neither  leisure,  nor 
elegant  surroundings,  nor  freedom  from  anxious  thoughts, 
nor  even  abounding  health.  Somehow,  during  her  busy 
life-time,  she  contrived  to  put  upon  record  compositions 
numerous  enough  to  fill  a  royal  octavo  volume  of  four 
hundred  pages, — compositions  which  entice  and  reward 
our  reading  of  them,  two  hundred  years  after  she  lived. 

Perhaps  her  prose  writings,  by  no  means  many  or  long, 
are  likely  to  be  more  attractive  to  the  altered  tastes  of  our 
time,  than  her  poems  can  be.  They  consist  of  a  brief  sketch 
of  her  own  life,  called  "  Religious  Experiences,"  and  of 
a  series  of  aphorisms  bearing  the  title  of  "  Meditations 
Divine  and  Moral."  It  is  in  the  latter  work  that  we  find  the 
best  examples  of  her  strength  of  thought,  and  of  her  feli- 

1  Works  of  Anne  Bradstreet,  34. 


ANNE  BRADSTREET.  28l 

city  in  condensed  and  pungent  expression  :  "  A  ship  that 
bears  much  sail,  and  little  or  no  ballast,  is  easily  overset ; 
and  that  man  whose  head  hath  great  abilities  and  his  heart 
little  or  no  grace,  is  in  danger  of  foundering."  *  "  Author- 
ity without  wisdom,  is  like  a  heavy  axe  without  an  edge, 
fitter  to  bruise  than  polish."  *  "  Iron,  till  it  be  throughly 
heat,  is  uncapable  to  be  wrought ;  so  God  sees  good  to  cast 
some  men  into  the  furnace  of  affliction,  and  then  beats 
them  on  his  anvil  into  what  frame  he  pleases."  *  "We  read 
in  Scripture  of  three  sorts  of  arrows, — the  arrow  of  an 
enemy,  the  arrow  of  pestilence,  and  the  arrow  of  a  slander- 
ous tongue.  The  two  first  kill  the  body,  the  last  the  good 
name ;  the  two  former  leave  a  man  when  he  is  once  dead, 
but  the  last  mangles  him  in  his  grave."'  "Sore  labor- 
ers have  hard  hands,  and  old  sinners  have  brawny  con- 
sciences." '  "  We  often  see  stones  hang  with  drops,  not 
from  any  innate  moisture,  but  from  a  thick  air  about  them. 
So  may  we  sometimes  see  marble-hearted  sinners  seem  full 
of  contrition  ;  but  it  is  not  from  any  dew  of  grace  within, 
but  from  some  black  clouds  that  impends  them,  which  pro- 
duces these  sweating  effects."'  "  Dim  eyes  are  the  con- 
comitants of  old  age ;  and  short-sightedness  in  those  that 
are  eyes  of  a  republic,  foretells  a  declining  state." 7  "Ambi- 
tious men  are  like  hops,  that  never  rest  climbing  so  long 
as  they  have  anything  to  stay  upon  ;  but  take  away  their 
props,  and  they  are  of  all,  the  most  dejected."  8 

It  was,  however,  as  a  poet  only,  that  Anne  Bradstreet 
was  known  in  literature  to  her  contemporaries.  Our  ex- 
pectations of  finding  high  poetic  merit  in  her  work,  are 
not  increased  by  ascertaining  the  lines  of  culture  through 
which  she  trained  herself  for  her  calling  as  poet.  Litera- 
ture, for  her,  was  not  a  republic  of  letters,  hospitable  to  all 
forms  of  human  thought,  but  a  strict  Puritan  common- 
wealth, founded  on  a  scheme  of  narrow  ascetic  intoler- 

1  Anne  Bradstreet,  48.        •  Ibid.  50.  »  Ibid.  54.  *  Ibid.  55. 

•  Ibid.  56.  •  Ibid.  58-59.      T  Ibid.  55.  •  Ibid.  55. 


282  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

ance,  and  excluding  from  its  citizenship  some  of  the 
sublimest,  daintiest,  and  most  tremendous  types  of  literary 
expression.  Evidently,  in  her  mind,  William  Shakespeare, 
play-wright  and  actor,  was  an  alien,  and  a  godless  person ; 
and  Ben  Jonson,  Massinger,  Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  Web- 
ster, Ford,  Shirley,  and  all  the  rest  of  that  superb  group 
of  masters,  were  sons  of  Belial.  Furthermore,  while  her 
imagination  thus  lost  the  witchery  and  the  stimulation  of 
the  great  English  dramatists,  she  was  taught  to  seek  for 
the  very  essence  of  poetry  in  the  quirks,  the  puns,  the  con- 
torted images,  the  painful  ingenuities  of  George  Herbert 
and  Francis  Quarles,  and  especially  of  "  The  Divine  Weeks 
and  Works  "  of  the  French  poet  Du  Bartas,  done  into  Eng- 
lish by  Joshua  Sylvester.  In  short,  she  was  a  pupil  of  the 
fantastic  school  of  English  poetry — the  poetry  of  the  later 
euphuists ;  the  special  note  of  which  is  the  worship  of  the 
quaint,  the  strained,  the  disproportionate,  the  grotesque, 
and  the  total  sacrifice  of  the  beautiful  on  the  altar  of  the 
ingenious.  Harmony,  taste,  dignity,  even  decency,  were 
by  this  school  eagerly  cast  away,  if  only  an  additional 
twist  could  be  given  to  the  turn  of  a  metaphor,  or  still 
another  antithesis  could  be  wrenched  from  the  agonies  of 
a  weary  epithet.  It  is  easy  enough  to  find  in  the  writ- 
ings of  Anne  Bradstreet  grotesque  passages,  preposter- 
ous stuff,  jingling  abominations ;  but  we  shall  only  mis- 
lead ourselves,  if  we  look  upon  these  as  traits  peculiarly 
characteristic  of  this  writer,  or  of  American  verse-writing  in 
the  seventeenth  century.  They  were,  rather,  the  symp- 
toms of  a  wider  and  far  deeper  literary  disease — a  dis- 
ease which,  originating  in  Italy  in  the  fifteenth  century, 
swept  westward  and  northward  like  the  plague,  desolating 
for  a  time  the  literatures  of  Spain,  of  France,  and  of  Eng- 
land. The  worst  lines  of  Anne  Bradstreet  and  of  the 
other  American  verse-writers  in  the  seventeenth  century, 
can  be  readily  matched  Jor_fantastic_ perversion,  and  for 
the  total  absence  of  beauty,  by  passages  from  the  poems 
of  John  Donne,  GeorglT^Herbert,  Crashaw,  Cleveland, 


ANNE  BRADSTREET.  283 

Waller,  Quarles,  Thomas  Coryat,  John  Taylor,  and  even 
of  Herrick,  Cowley,  and  Dryden.1 

Glancing  over  the  entire  field  of  Anne  Bradstreet's 
poems,  we  find  them  to  include,  first,  a  number  of  minor 
pieces,  such  as  elegies,  epitaphs,  and  complimentary  verses; 
second,  two  longer  poems  entitled  "  A  Dialogue  between 
Old  England  and  New,"  and  "  Contemplations ; "  and  third, 
a  series  of  huge  and  heavy  poems  wherein  the  topics  are 
grouped  together  in  quaternions.  The  first  of  these  qua- 
ternions is  named  "  The  Four  Elements;"  and  some  de- 
scription of  this  poem  will  give  us  a  sufficient  idea  of  the 
method  and  spirit  of  all  the  poems  that  constitute  the 
group.  The  personages  of  the  poem  are  four,  Fire,  Air, 
Earth,  and  Water ;  and  upon  occasion  they 

"  did  contest 

Which  was  the  strongest,  noblest,  and  the  best, 
Who  was  of  greatest  use  and  mightiest  force."1 

Each  of  these  potent  beings  is  represented  as  having 
a  very  high  opinion  of  her  own  merits,  and  as  disposed  to 
assert  this  opinion  with  all  the  loquacity  and  controversial 
vehemence  of  a  theological  wrangle  in  the  seventeenth 
century: 

"  All  would  be  chief,  and  all  scorned  to  be  under; 
Whence  issued  winds  and  rains,  lightning  and  thunder. 
The  quaking  earth  did  groan,  the  sky  looked  black; 
The  Fire,  the  forced  Air.  in  sunder  crack; 
The  sea  did  threat  the  heavens,  the  heavens  the  earth. 
All  looked  like  a  chaos  or  new  birth : 


1  The  later  English  euphimts  were  called  by  Dr.  Johnson  "the  metaphys- 
ical poets,"  a  description  that  does  not  describe  them.  Perhaps  Milton's 
phrase  is  the  best  one — the  "  fantastic-*."  What  Donne  and  hi*  poetic  asso- 
ciates were  to  English  literature,  that  were  Marini  to  Italian  literature,  Gon- 
gora  to  Spanish.  Du  Bartas  to  French.  For  accounts  of  the  "conceited" 
epoch  in  English  Literature,  see  Henry  Morley,  "First  Sketch  of  Eng  Lit." 
526-532;  Thomas  Arnold,  "Manual  of  Eng.  Lit."  160-164;  Taine,  "Hist 
Eng.  Lit."  I.  201-206. 

'  Works  of  Anne  Bradstreet,  103. 


284  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

Fire  broiled  Earth,  and  scorched  Earth  it  choked: 
Both  by  their  darings  Water  so  provoked 
That  roaring  in  it  came,  and  with  its  source 
Soon  made  the  combatants  abate  their  force. 
The  rumbling,  hissing,  puffing  was  so  great, 
The  world's  confusion  it  did  seem  to  threat."' 

All  this  smoke  and  pother  are  over  the  small  question 
of  priority  between  the  Four  Elements,  in  the  privilege 
of  making  the  harangues  in  which  each  is  to  let  forth 
her  own  preeminent  merits,  and  to  denounce,  after  the 
good  old  fashion  of  theological  debaters,  the  vices  and  im- 
potencies  of  all  competitors.  The  difficulty  is  at  last 
composed  by  an  agreement  that  Fire  should  have  the 
floor  first,  and  be  followed,  in  order,  by  Earth,  Water,  and 
Air.  Whereupon  Fire  springs  to  her  feet,  and  makes  a  hot 
and  learned  speech,  recounting  her  valuable  services  in  the 
mechanic  arts,  in  warfare,  in  cookery,  in  chemistry,  and  in 
other  mundane  employments;  then  waxing  self-compla- 
cent, and  leaving  these  lowly  utilities,  she  proceeds  to 
claim  the  glory  and  the  beauty  of  the  warm  and  illumi- 
nating orbs  that  blaze  in  the  sky: 

"  my  flame  aspires 
To  match  on  high  with  the  celestial  fires."2 

She  asserts  for  herself,  in  particular,  the  honor  of  the 
annual  blessing  which  the  sun  works  upon  the  Earth : 

"  How  doth  his  warmth  refresh  thy  frozen  back, 
And  trim  thee  brave  in  green,  after  thy  black. 
Both  man  and  beast  rejoice  at  his  approach, 
And  birds  do  sing  to  see  his  glittering  coach."  ! 

After  much  discourse  about  her  astrological  operations, 
she  boasts  of  her  volcanic  eruptions,  and  of  all  the  mighty 
cities  that  she  has  consumed,  and  points  prophetically  to 
her  final  and  most  triumphant  exertion  of  power  when  all 
things  upon  earth  shall  surrender  to  her  flames : 

1  Works  of  Anne  Bradstreet,  103.  s  Ibid.  105.  3  Ibid.  106. 


ANNE  BRADSTREET.  285 

"  And  in  a  word,  the  world  I  shall  consume. 
And  all  therein,  at  that  great  day  of  doom."1 

Having  made  this  glowing  speech,  Fire  takes  her  seat, 
and  Earth  mounts  the  rostrum,  showing  herself  not  infe- 
rior to  Fire  in  valiant  braggadocio,  and  in  the  will  to  re- 
tort upon  Fire  in  many  a  characteristic  taunt  and  quip. 
Then, 

"Scarce  Earth  had  done,  but  the  angry  Water  moved: 
Sister,  quoth  she,  it  had  full  well  behoved 
Among  your  boastings  to  have  praised  me, 
Cause  of  your  fruitfulness  as  you  shall  see. 

Not  one  of  us,  all  knows,  that's  like  to  thee — 
Ever  in  craving  from  the  other  three. 
But  thou  art  bound  to  me  above  the  rest, 
Who  am  thy  drink,  thy  blood,  thy  sap  and  best. 
If  I  withhold,  what  art  thou  ?     Dead,  dry  lump, 
Thou  bearest  nor  grass  nor  plant  nor  tree  nor  stump. 
Thy  extreme  thirst  is  moistened  by  my  love 
With  springs  below  and  showers  from  above; 
Or  else  thy  sunburnt  face  and  gaping  chops 
Complain  to  tlje  heavens  if  I  withhold  my  drops."1 

The  speech  of  Water,  though  rather  a  dry  one,  is  equal 
to  the  others,  perhaps,  in  the  flow  of  its  fanfaronade. 
By  the  dire  calamity  of  droughts  she  argues,  in  converse 
fashion,  her  own  utility  to  man  and  beast ;  she  mentions 
proudly  all  her  "  fountains,  rivers,  lakes,  and  ponds,"  her 
"  sundry  seas,  black  and  white,"  her  various  curative  waters, 
her  mysterious  tides,  her  dews,  the  value  of  her  oceans  and 
rivers  to  the  traffic  of  the  world  ;  and,  finally,  she  illustrates 
her  greatness  by  the  destruction  and  havoc  worked  upon 
the  world  through  her  great  floods,  those  of  Deucalion, 
Noah,  and  others.  At  last  she  ends : 


"  Much  might  I  say  of  wracks,  but  that  111  spare, 
And  now  give  place  unto  our  sister,  Air.*'1 


1  Works  of  Anne  Bradstrcet,  108.          •  Ibid.  114.  » Ibid.  118. 


286  HISTOR  Y  OF  A  MER1CAN  LITER  A  TURE. 

Upon  the  whole,  Madam  Air  is  rather  the  most  voluble 
and  expert  of  all,  in  this  contest  of  braggart  speech-mak- 
ing. With  a  sort  of  meek  self-complacency,  as  thanking 
God  for  her  humility,  she  thus  sets  out  upon  her  oration  : 

"Content,  quoth  Air,  to  speak  the  last  of  you, 
Yet  am  not  ignorant  first  was  my  due. 
I  do  suppose  you'll  yield  without  control, 
I  am  the  breath  of  every  living  soul. 
Mortals,  what  one  of  you  that  loves  not  me 
Abundantly  more  than  my  sisters  three  ? 

I  ask  the  man  condemned,  that's  near  his  death, 
Now  gladly  should  his  gold  purchase  his  breath. 

No,  Earth,  thy  witching  trash  were  all  but  vain 
If  my  pure  air  thy  sons  did  not  sustain. 

Nay,  what  are  words  which  do  reveal  the  mind  ? 

Speak  who  or  what  they  will,  they  are  but  wind. 

Your  drums,  your  trumpets,  and  your  organs'  sound, 

What  is't  but  forced  air  which  doth  rebound  ? 

And  such  are  echoes  and  report  of  th'  gun 

That  tells  afar  the  exploit  which  it  hath  done. 

Your  songs  and  pleasant  tunes,  they  are  the  same, 

And  so's  the  notes  which  nightingales  do  frame. 

Ye  forging  smiths,  if  bellows  once  were  gone, 

Your  red-hot  work  more  coldly  would  go  on. 

Ye  mariners,  'tis  I  that  fill  your  sails 

And  speed  you  to  your  port  with  wished  gales. 

When  burning  heat  doth  cause  you  faint,  I  cool ; 

And  when  I  smile,  your  ocean's  like  a  pool. 

I  help  to  ripe  the  corn,  I  turn  the  mill, 

And  with  myself  I  every  vacuum  fill. 

The  ruddy,  sweet  sanguine  is  like  to  Air, 

And  youth  and  spring,  sages  to  me  compare." ' 

In  continuing  this  rehearsal  of  her  merits,  she  gives  a 
list  of  her  "  fowls"— the  feathery  inhabitants  of  her  em- 
pire ;  she  speaks  of  her  force  when  offended,  as  shown  in 
fevers  and  in  pestilences,  and  especially  in  tempests,  ex- 
claiming : 

1  Works  of  Anne  Bradstreet,  119-120. 


ANNE  BRADSTREET.  287 

"  How  many  rich-fraught  vessels  have  I  split  ? 
Some  upon  sands,  some  upon  rocks,  have  hit ; 
Some  have  I  forced  to  gain  an  unknown  shore  ; 
Some  overwhelmed  with  waves  and  seen  no  more." ' 

There  is  no  little  poetic  vividness  in  her  picture  of  the  airy 
battles  sometimes  fought  in  her  sky,  and  of  the  dreadful  sig- 
nals which  these  high  phenomena  hold  out  over  the  earth : 

•'  Then  what  prodigious  sights  I  sometimes  show: 
As  battles  pitched  in  th'  air,  as  countries  know, 

(Their  joining,  fighting,  forcing,  and  retreat, 
That  earth  appears  in  heaven,  O  wonder  great! 
Sometimes  red,  flaming  swords  and  blazing  stars, 
Portentous  signs  of  famines,  plagues,  and  wars.  ^ 
Which  make  the  mighty  monarch*  (ear  the.r  fates, 
By  death  or  great  mutation  ol  their  state.-*."- 

The  last  poem  of  this  series,  "The  Four  Monarchies," 
is  by  far  the  longest  and  most  ambitious.  It  is  simply 
a  rhymed  chronicle  of  ancient  history  from  Nimrod  to 
Tarquinius  Superbur,,  following  very  closely  Sir  Walter 
Raleigh's  "  History  of  the  World."  Heavy  as  the  poem 
seems  to  us,  to  the  first  generation  of  her  readers,  doubt- 
less, it  seemed  the  most  precious  issue  of  her  genius.  It 
commended  itself  to  the  sturdy  and  careful  minds  of  her 
Puritan  constituency,  as  useful  poetry.  They  could  read 
it  without  any  twinges  of  self-reproach ;  it  was  not  too 
pleasant ;  it  was  not  trivial  or  antic  or  amusing;  they  were 
in  no  danger  of  losing  their  souls,  by  being  borne  away  on 
the  vain  and  airy  enticements  of  frivolous  words;  then, 
best  of  all,  it  was  not  poetic  fiction,  but  solid  fact.  Very 
likely,  they  gave  to  her  their  choicest  praise,  and  called 
her,  for  this  work,  a  painful  poet  ;  in  which  compliment 
every  modern  reader  will  most  cordially  join. 

Of  course,  Anne  Bradstreet  had  ample  precedents  in 
English  literature  for  this  form  of  poetry.*  Of  course, 

1  Works  of  Anne  Bradstreet,  lai.  *  Ibid.  122. 

•For  example,  "The  Mirror  for  Magistrates,"  Daniel's  "  History  of  the 

Civil  Wars."  and  Drayton's  "Barons'  Wars,"  to  say  nothing  of  the  early 
chronicles,  many  of  which  were  in  verse. 


288  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITER  A  TURE. 

too,  she  was  grossly  misled ;  since  poetry  is  nothing,  if  it 
is  nothing  more  than  rhymed  historical  teaching.  The 
fatal  taint  in  all  her  poetical  life  was  that,  badly  instructed 
by  her  literary  guides,  she  too  generally  drew  her  materials 
from  books  rather  than  from  nature.  How  much  better, 
had  she  bravely  looked  within  her  own  heart,  and  out 
upon  the  real  world,  and  given  voice  to  herself  rather  than 
to  mere  erudition  !  What  she  could  have  done  in  this 
way,  she  has  partly  shown  in  "  Contemplations,"  the  very 
best  of  her  poems.  It  was  written  late  in  her  life,  at  her 
home  in  Andover,  and  is  a  genuine  expression  of  poetic 
feeling  in  the  presence  of  nature ;  not  a  laborious  trans- 
fusion into  metre  of  leaden  historical  items. 

She  stands  confronting  the  gorgeous  array  of  the  forests 
when  robed  in  their  October  tints : 

"  Sometime  now  past  in  the  autumnal  tide, 

When  Phoebus  wanted  hut  one  hour  to  bed, 
The  trees  all  richly  clad,  yet  void  of  pride, 
Were  gilded  o'er  by  his  rich  golden  head."1 

Her  eye  advances  from  one  glorious  object  to  another, 
"  the  stately  oak,"  "  the  glistering  sun,"  and  from  each  she 
evokes  some  noble  suggestion  : 

"Silent,  alone,  where  none  or  saw  or  heard, 

In  pathless  paths  I  led  my  wandering  feet ; 
My  humble  eyes  to  lofty  skies  I  reared 

To  sing  some  song  my  mazed  muse  thought  meet."* 

At  last,  she  reaches  the  banks  of  the  beautiful  river  whose 
massive,  potent,  and  calm  presence  must  often  have  been 
to  her  a  soothing  and  strengthening  refuge  : 

"  Under  the  cooling  shadow  of  a  stately  elm, 

Close  sat  I  by  a  goodly  river's  side, 
Where  gliding  streams  the  rocks  did  overwhelm  ; 

A  lonely  place,  with  pleasures  dignified. 
I  once  that  loved  the  shady  woods  so  well, 
Now  thought  the  rivers  did  the  trees  excel, 
And  if  the  sun  would  ever  shine,  there  would  I  dwell. 

Works  of  Anne  Brad  street,  370.  *Ibid.  372. 


ANNE  BRADSTREET. 


2*9 


While  on  the  stealing  stream  I  fixed  mine  eye, 
Which  to  the  longed  for  ocean  held  its  course, 

I  marked  nor  crooks,  nor  rubs,  that  there  did  lie, 
Could  hinder  aught,  but  still  augment  its  force  : 

O  happy  flood,  quoth  I,  that  holds  thy  race 

Till  thou  arrive  at  thy  beloved  place. 

Nor  is  it  rocks  or  shoals  that  can  obstruct  thy 


Nor  is't  enough  that  thou  alone  may'st  slide, 
But  hundred  brooks  in  thy  clear  waves  do  meet ; 

So  hand  in  hand  along  .with  thee  they  glide 
To  Thetis'  house,  where  all  embrace  and  greet 

Thou  emblem  true  of  what  I  count  the  best, 

O  could  I  lead  my  rivulets  to  rest. 

So  may  we  pass  to  that  vast  mansion,  ever 


While  musing  thus,  with  contemplation  fed, 
And  thousand  fancies  buzzing  in  my  brain, 

The  sweet-tongued  Philomel  perched  o'er  my  head. 
And  chanted  forth  a  most  melodious  strain, 

Which  rapt  me  so  with  wonder  and  delight, 

I  judged  my  hearing  better  than  my  sight, 

And  wished  me  wings  with  her  awhile  to  take  my  flight"1 

This  strain  of  music  from  the  "  merry  bird  "  draws,  like- 
wise, from  the  poet  a  rapturous  eulogy  upon  the  free,  sweet 
life  of  the  songster,  that 

"  Feels  no  sad  thoughts,  nor  cruciating  cares." 

With  this,  she  contrasts  the  worried  and  baffled  existence 
of  man,  who  nevertheless  clings  to  that  which  is  so  unsat- 
isfying : 

"  And  yet  this  sinful  creature,  frail  and  vain, 

This  lump  of  wretchedness,  of  sin  and  sorrow. 
This  weather-beaten  vessel  wracked  with  pain. 
Joys  not  in  hope  of  an  eternal  morrow."  * 

Through  this  rather  conventional  path  of  reflection  she 
proceeds  till,  in  the  final  stanza  of  the  poem,  she  rises  to 
an  altitude  of  noble  and  even  stately  song : 

'  Works  of  Anne  Bradstreet,  377.  *  Ibid.  380. 


290  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE 

"  O  Time,  the  fatal  wrack  of  mortal  things, 
That  draws  oblivion's  curtains  over  kings  : 
Their  sumptuous  monuments,  men  know  them  not; 
Their  names  without  a  record  are  forgot ; 
Their  parts,  their  ports,  their  pomps,  all  laid  in  th"  dust ; 
Nor  wit,  nor  gold,  nor  buildings,  scape  time's  rust. 
But  he  whose  name  is  graved  in  the  white  stone 
Shall  last  and  shine,  when  all  of  these  are  gone."  ' 

This  poem  of  "  Contemplations  "  is  not  the  only  one  in 
which  Anne  Bradstreet,  liberated  from  her  book-learning, 
has  shown  the  power  that  was  in  her  of  giving  strong  and 
poetic  expression  to  her  own  feeling.  There  is  a  little 
poem  written  within  a  few  months  of  her  death,  entitled 
"  Longing  for  Heaven,"  which  has  in  it  some  lines  of 
genuine  pathos,  simplicity,  and  verbal  grace  : 

"  As  weary  pilgrim  now  at  rest 
Hugs  with  delight  his  silent  nest ; 
His  wasted  limbs  now  lie  full  soft, 
That  miry  steps  have  trodden  oft ; 
Blesses  himself  to  think  upon 
His  dangers  past,  and  travails  done  ; 

A  pilgrim  I,  on  earth  perplexed, 

With  sins,  with  cares  and  sorrows  vexed, 

By  age  and  pains  brought  to  decay, 

And  my  clay  house  mouldering  away, 

Oh,  how  I  long  to  be  at  rest 

And  soar  on  high  among  the  blest."9 

Very  naturally,  she  was  a  writer  of  hymns ;  and  of  these 
we  must  frankly  say  that  they  are  bad  enough.  Never- 
theless,  when  compared  with  the  cacophonous  and  jagged 
productions  of  her  hymnological  contemporaries  in  New 
England,  they  seem  marvels  of  music,  and  of  fluent  skill. 

It  is  interesting  to  trace  in  her  poems  the  tokens  of  the 
opinions  she  held  concerning  the  politics  of  those  times, 
by  which  must  be  meant  the  affairs  of  church  as  well  as  of 
state,  in  England  as  well  as  in  America.  In  her  poem  of 

1  Works  of  Anne  Bradstreet,  381.  »  Ibid.  42-43. 


ANNE  BkADSlkEET 


29I 


•'  Old  England  and  New,"  she  has  given  a  vigorous  state- 
ment of  the  questions  then  at  issue  in  the  mother-land. 
Though  she  sided  with  parliament,  she  was  by  no  means 
inclined  to  democratic  opinions.  On  the  ecclesiastical 
side  of  politics,  however,  she  held  without  reserve  the 
most  sweeping  anti-Romanist,  and  anti-Ritualist  conclu- 
sions : 

"  These  are  the  days  the  church's  foes  to  crush, 
To  root  out  Popelings,  head,  tail,  branch,  and  rush. 
Let's  bring  Baal's  vestments  forth  to  make  a  fire, 
Their  mitres,  surplices,  and  all  their  tire. 
Copes,  rochets,  crosiers,  and  such  empty  trash, 
And  let  their  names  consume,  but  let  the  flash 
Light  Christendom  and  all  the  world,  to  see 
We  hate  Rome's  Whore  with  all  her  trumpery." ' 

The  invective  of  these  ringing  lines,  verging  well  to- 
ward satire,  is  not  a  solitary  example  of  her  capacity  in 
that  direction.  Indeed,  a  sort  of  grim  mirth  now  and  then 
relaxes  the  severity  of  her  verse,  and  expresses  itself  in  a 
half-playful  sarcasm.  Thus, 

"  one  would  more  glad 
With  a  tame  fool  converse,  than  with  a  mad." ' 

The  traditional  disparagement  by  men,  of  the  intelligence 
of  her  sex,  of  course  she  felt, — the  sting  of  it,  the  wrong  of 
it ;  and  she  resented  it,  sometimes  in  the  form  of  a  sar- 
castic reference,  sometimes  in  that  of  an  ironical  admis- 
sion that  hers  was  indeed  *'  a  less  noble  gender,"  and 
sometimes  in  that  of  a  superb  and  defiant  denial.  For 
instance,  as  a  woman,  she  seemed  to  take  vast  pleasure  in 
the  magnificent  career  of  Queen  Elizabeth  : 

"She  hath  wiped  off  the  aspersion  of  her  sex. 
That  women  wisdom  lack  to  play  the  Rex."* 

Appealing  to  the  universal  and  enthusiastic  pride  of  Eng- 
lishmen in  the  imperial  greatness  of  their  recent  woman 

1  Works  of  Anne  Bradstreet,  340-341.         *  Ibid.  145.          *  Ibid,  y 


2Q2  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

monarch,  the  poet,  in  a  flash,  retaliates  upon  masculine 
detraction,  with  this  keen  and  glorious  thrust : 

"  Now  say,  have  women  worth,  or  have  they  none  ? 
Or  had  they  some,  but  with  our  Queen  is't  gone  ? 
Nay,  masculines,  you  have  thus  taxed  us  long  ; 
But  she,  though  dead,  will  vindicate  our  wrong. 
Let  such  as  say  our  sex  is  void  of  reason, 
Know  'tis  a  slander  now,  but  once  was  treason." ' 

Upon  the  whole,  it  is  impossible  to  deny  that  Anne 
Bradstreet  was  sadly  misguided  by  the  poetic  standards 
of  her  religious  sect  and  of  her  literary  period,  and  that 
the  vast  bulk  of  her  writings  consists  not  of  poetry,  but  of 
metrical  theology  and  chronology  and  politics  and  physics. 
Yet,  amid  all  this  lamentable  rubbish,  there  is  often  to  be 
found  such  an  ingot  of  genuine  poetry,  as  proves  her  to 
have  had,  indeed,  the  poetic  endowment.  Of  her  own 
claims  as  a  writer  of  verse,  she  kept  for  herself  a  very 
modest  estimate ;  and  in  the  Prologue  to  her  volume,  she 
speaks  of  her  writings  in  diffident  lines,  whose  merit  alone 
would  prompt  us  to  grant  to  her  a  higher  poetic  rank  than 
she  herself  asks  for: 

"  And  oh,  ye  high  flown  quills  that  soar  the  skies, 
And  ever  with  your  prey  still  catch  your  praise ; 
If  e'er  you  deign  these  lowly  lines  your  eyes, 
Give  thyme  and  parsley  wreaths  :  I  ask  no  bays. 
This  mean  and  unrefined  ore  of  mine 
Will  make  your  glistering  gold  but  more  to  shine."* 

1  Works  of  Anne  Bradstreet,  361. 

8  Ibid.  102.  In  the  last  line  but  one  I  have  substituted  "  ore"  for  "  ure," 
which,  in  spite  of  the  explanation  of  the  latest  editor  of  her  works,  I  think  to 
be  a  misprint  in  the  first  edition.  This  may  be  a  suitable  place  in  which  to 
mention  the  interesting  fact  that  among  the  lineal  descendants  of  this  noble 
personage — this  "  Gentlewoman  of  New  England  "  as  she  was  designated  on 
the  title-page  of  the  first  edition  of  her  poems,  this  "peerless  gentlewoman" 
is  John  Norton  calls  her — are  included  the  Channings,  the  Buckminsterst 
gUza  B.  Lee,  Richard  H.  Dana  the  poet,  Richard  H.  Dana  the  prose-writer, 
ndell  Phillips,  and  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes. 


A    HISTORY 

OF 

AMERICAN    LITERATURE 
1607-1765 

u 


MOSES  COIT   TYLER 


CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER  XL 

NIW   ENGLAND  :    THE    VERSE-WRITERS. 

L— The  two  literary  periods  in  our  colonial  age — Their  points  of  dis- 
tinction— The  times  and  the  men — Our  intended  line  of  march 
through  the  second  period 5 

II. — John  Norton — His  poem  on  the  death  of  Anne  Bradstreet — John 

Rogers — His  poetic  praise  of  Anne  Bradstreet 9 

III. — Urian  Oakrs—  His  high  literary  gifts—  His  elegy  on  the  death  of 

Thomas  Shepard 15 

IV. — Peter  Folger,  the  ballad-writer—  Benjamin  Tompson,  the  satirist. .      19 

V.— Michael  Wiggles  worth,  the  sturdy  rhymer  of  New  England  Calvin- 
ism — His  great  popularity — Puts  into  verse  the  glooms  and  the 
comforts  of  the  prevailing  faith — The  realistic  poet  of  hell-fire — 
"God's  Controversy  with  New  England" — "Meat  out  of  the 
Eater  " — "  The  Day  of  Doom  " — Synopsis  of  the  latter  poem — Its 
wide  diffusion  and  influence — His  son,  Samuel  Wigglesworth,  a 
true  poet—"  A  Funeral  Song  "  by  the  latter 23 

VI. — Nicholas  Noyes,  the  last  and  greatest  of  our  Fantastics — His  fine 
persona]  career — The  monstrosities  of  his  muse — Prefatory  poem 
on  the  "  Magnalia  " — Lines  on  John  Higginson — Elegy  on  Joseph 
Green — Verses  on  the  painful  malady  of  a  Reverend  friend 38 

VIL— Strong  influence  in  America  of  the  contemporary  English  poets, 
especially  Pope,  Blackmore,  Watts,  Thomson,  Young — Echoes  of 
them  in  Francis  Knapp,  Benjamin  Col  man,  Jane  Turell,  Mather 
Byles — The  career  and  poetry  of  Roger  Wolcott — His  Connecti- 
cut epic — His  "  Poetical  Meditations  " 43 

VIII. — Humorous  poetry — John  Seccomb  and  his  burlesque  verses — 
The  facetiousness  of  Joseph  Green  —  His  impromptus  —  His 
"  Entertainment  for  a  Winter  Evening  ** 46 

IX.— War- verses  —  Popular  ballads  —  "  Lovewell's  Fight  "  — Tilden's 
"Miscellaneous  Poems"  — John  Maylem,  Philo-Bellum  —  Hi« 
"  Conquest  of  Lonisburg  "—His  "  Gallic  Perfidy  " 5* 

X. — A  group  of  serious  singers — John  Adams — His  accomplishments  and 
poetry—"  Poems  by  Several  Hands  " — Peter  Oliver,  the  literary 
politician— His  poem  in  honor  of  Josiah  Willard 54 

iii 


iv  CONTENTS. 

XI.—"  Pietas  et  Gratulatio  "—Its  occasion— Its  authors — A  burst  of 
American  loyalty  to  the  English  monarchy — Its  Greek  and  Latin 
verses — Its  English  verses — Apotheosis  of  George  the  Second — 
Salutation  to  George  the  Third 57 

CHAPTER  XII. 

NEW  ENGLAND  :  THE  DYNASTY  OF  THE  MATHERS. 

I.— The  founder  of  the  dynasty,  Richard  Mather — His  flight  from  Eng- 
land and  career  in  America — His  traits — His  writings — An  ecclesi- 
astical politician — His  love  of  study 64 

H. — Increase  Mather — His  American  birth  and  breeding — His  residence 
in  Ireland  and  England — Returns  to  New  England — His  great 
influence  there — Pulpit-orator,  statesman,  courtier,  college  presi 
dent — His  learning — His  laboriousness  in  study — His  manner  in 
the  pulpit — The  literary  qualities  of  his  writings — Specimens- 
Number  and  range  of  his  published  works — His  "  Illustrious 
Providences  " — Origin  of  the  book — Its  value 67 

III. — Cotton  Mather — His  preeminence — The  adulation  received  by  him 
— His  endowments — His  precocity  —  The  development  of  his 
career — His  religious  character  and  discipline — His  intellectual 
accomplishments — His  habits  as  a  reader — The  brilliancy  of  his 
talk — Contemporaneous  admiration — The  watchword  of  his  life — 
The  multitude  of  his  books — Characteristic  titles — The  fame  of 
his  "Magnalia" — His  anxieties  respecting  its  publication — Its 
scope — His  advantages  and  disadvantages  for  historical  writing — 
Estimate  of  the  historical  character  of  the  "  Magnalia  " — The 
best  of  his  subsequent  writings  —  "  Bonifacius  "  —  "  Psalterium 
Amcricanum  " — "  Manuductio  ad  Ministerium  " — Its  counsels  to 
a  young  prophet — Study  of  Hebrew,  of  history,  of  natural  phil- 
osophy— Assault  on  Aristotle — The  place  of  Cotton  Mather  in 
American  literature — The  last  of  the  Fantastics  in  prose — Traits 
of  his  style — Pedantry — His  style  not  agreeable  to  his  later  con- 
temporaries— His  theory  of  style — Defence  of  his  own  style  against 
his  critics 73 

IV.— Samuel  Mather — His  days  and  deeds— A  stanch  patriot — The  end 

of  the  dynasty 90 

CHAPTER  XIII. 

NEW   ENGLAND  :    TOPICS  OF    POPULAR   DISCUSSION. 

L— Early  literary  prominence  of  the  clergy — Growth  of  the  laity  in  intel- 
lectual influence — The  range  of  the  people's  thought  and  talk 
during  the  second  colonial  period g> 


CONTENTS.  v 

II.— -The  mournful  reminiscences  of  Joshua  Scottow — The  witchcraft 

spasm— Robert  Calef  and  "  More  Wonders  of  the  Invisible  World,"  94 

III. — The  diary  in  literature — Sarah  Kemble  Knight — Her  "Journal" 
— Pictures  of  travel  and  of  rustic  manners  early  in  the  eighteenth 
century 96 

IV. — Samuel  Sewall — His  brave  life — The  man — His  attitude  toward 
witchcraft  and  slavery — His  "  Selling  of  Joseph  " — Among  the 
prophets  —  "A  Description  of  the  New  Heaven  " —  The  New 
Jerusalem  to  be  in  America — A  gallant  champion  of  the  immor- 
tality of  the  souls  of  women 99 

V.— John  Wise— His  inadequate  fame— His  genius  as  a  writer— His 
career  as  preacher,  muscular  Christian,  and  opponent  of  despot* 
ism — The  first  great  American  expounder  of  democracy  in  church 
and  state — His  victorious  assault  upon  a  scheme  for  clerical  aggran- 
dizement—" The  Churches'  Quarrel  Espoused  " — The  logic,  wit, 
and  eloquence  of  the  book— His  "  Vindication  of  the  Government 
of  New  England  Churches  " — Analysis  of  the  book— Traits  of  his 
mind  and  style 104 

VI. — Jeremiah  Dummer — His  early  fame — Short  career  as  a  preacher — 
Goes  to  London  and  becomes  courtier,  barrister,  and  colonial 
agent — A  faithful  American  always — His  "  Letter  to  a  Noble 
Lord"— His  "  Defence  of  the  New  England  Charters" — The  ele- 
gance and  strength  of  his  style Il6 

VII. — The  almanac  in  modern  literature — Its  early  prominence  in  Amer- 
ica— Its  function — Wit  and  wisdom  in  almanacs  not  originated 
by  Franklin — Nathaniel  Ames,  the  greatest  of  our  colonial  al- 
manac-makers— His  M  Astronomical  Diary  and  Almanac,"  an  an- 
nual miscellany  of  information  and  amusement — Its  great  popu- 
larity and  utility — Its  predictions— Its  shrewd  and  earnest  appeals 
to  the  common  mind— Its  suggestions  concerning  health — Its 
original  verses — Predicts  the  Day  of  Judgment — A  noble  prophecy 
of  universal  peace — Vision  of  the  coming  greatness  of  America 
—A  friendly  address  to  posterity lao 

CHAPTER  XIV. 

NEW   ENGLAND  :    HISTORY   AND   BIOGRAPHY. 

L — Further  development  of  the  historic  spirit  in  New  England — Biog- 
raphy and  biographers  —  Ebenezer  Turell — His  biographies  of 
Jane  Turell  and  of  Benjamin  Colman 131 

IL — William  Hubbard — Picture  of  him  by  John  Dunton— His  literary 
culture  and  aptitude — Qualities  of  his  style — His  "General  His- 
tory of  New  England  "—His  -  Indian  Wars  "—Celebrity  of  the 
latter— Its  faults  and  merits — Represents  the  wrath  of  the  people 
against  the  Indians — Portrait  of  a  noble  savage 133 


vi  CONTENTS. 

III. — Other  literary  memorials  of  the  long  conflict  with  the  Indians — 
Mary  Rowlandson  and  her  thrilling  "  Narrative"  of  Indian  cap- 
tivity— "  The  Redeemed  Captive,"  by  John  Williams  of  Deerfield 
— Benjamin  Church — His  history  of  King  Philip's  War  and  of 
other  struggles  with  the  Indians — Interest  of  his  narratives — 
Samuel  Penhallow — His  history  of  Indian  wars — Pictures  of  hero- 
ism and  cruelty — His  reminiscences  of  classical  study — Samuel 
Niles — His  "  History  of  the  Indian  and  French  Wars  " 138 

IV. — Thomas  Prince — His  eminent  career — His  special  taste  and  train- 
ing for  history — Has  the  cardinal  virtues  of  an  historian — His 
"  Chronological  History  of  New  England  " — Thoroughness  of  his 
methods — Salient  features  of  the  book — Its  worthiness 144 

V. — John  Callender — His  careful  sketch  of  the  first  century  of  Rhode 

Island's  history 150 

VI.-— William  Douglass — The  life  and  the  singularities  of  the  man — A 
literary  Ishmaelite — His  ability  and  self-confidence — His  sarcastic 
account  of  the  medical  profession  in  America — His  "Summary" 
— A  passionate,  heterogeneous,  able  book — Its  style  and  scope — 
Its  drolleries — His  dislike  of  the  Indians,  of  the  French,  of  White- 
field,  of  Bishop  Berkeley,  and  of  paper-money — General  estimate 
of  his  book 151 


CHAPTER   XV. 

NEW   ENGLAND  :    THE    PULPIT    IN    LITERATURE. 

I. — Continued  ascendency  of  the  clergy — Their  full  maintenance  of  the 
grand  traits  of  their  predecessors, — manliness,  scholarship,  thought- 
fulness,  eloquence — Their  improvement  upon  their  predecessors 
in  breadth,  and  in  social  and  literary  urbanity 159 

H.'^John  Higginson — Sketch  of  him  by  John  Dunton — The  power  of 
his  character  and  of  his  long  life — His  election-sermon — His 
"  Attestation  "  to  the  "  Magnalia  " 160 

III. — William  Stoughton,  preacher  and  statesman — His  "  Narrative  of 
the  Proceedings  of  Andros  " — His  discourse  on  "  New  England's 
True  Interest,  not  to  Lie  " — Its  literary  ability — Its  courage.  . .  .  161 

IV. — Urian  Oakes — His  greatness  in  prose  as  well  as  in  verse — Contem- 
poraneous estimates  of  him — His  first  artillery-sermon — Its  great 
eloquence — Its  delineation  of  the  Christian  soldier — His  election- 
sermon — His  second  artillery-sermon 163 

V.— Samuel  Willard— His  "Complete  Body  of  Divinity" — His  career 
— His  theological  lectures — Their  great  influence — Their  publi- 
cation in  1726  in  the  first  American  folio— Strong  qualities  of  the 
book 167 


CONTENTS.  Vil 

VI. — Solomon  Stoddard — His  activity  as  a  writer— His  special  reputa- 
tion for  soundness  of  judgment — His  "  Answer  to  Some  Cases  of 
Conscience  respecting  the  Country  " — The  sinfulness  of  long  hair 
and  of  periwigs — Condemnation  of  other  frivolities 169 

VII. — Benjamin  Colman  —  His  great  contemporaneous  influence  in 
church  and  state — His  fine  culture — His  residence  in  England — 
His  particular  friendships  there — His  return  to  Boston — His  long 
and  prosperous  public  career — His  discourses — Their  literary 
polish — His  charitable  spirit 171 

VIII. — John  Barnard  of  Marblehead — His  versatile  culture — His  emi- 
nence— His  intellectual  traits — His  volumes  of  sermons — His 
gentlemanly  treatment  of  sinners 175 

IX. — Jonathan  Edwards — Outline  of  his  life — His  qualities,  spiritual 
and  intellectual — His  precocity  in  metaphysics,  and  in  physics — 
His  juvenile  writings — His  more  mature  studies  in  science — His 
spiritual  self-discipline — His  resolutions — The  sorrows  of  his  life 
— Habits  as  a  student  and  thinker — H is  power  as  a  preacher — 
Analysis  of  his  method  in  discourse — "  Sinners  in  the  Hands  of 
an  Angry  God  " — His  literary  characteristics 177 

X. — Mather  llyles — A  scene  in  Hollis  Street  Church  early  in  the  Revolu- 
tion— His  brilliant  career  before  the  Revolution — His  versatility — 
The  misfortune  of  his  later  reputation  as  a  jester — A  great  pulpit- 
orator— His  literary  qualities — His  exposition  of  the  preacher's 
character — His  favorite  themes — Passages  from  his  sermons 193 

XI. — Jonathan  Mayhew — The  lines  of  his  influence — Estimate  of  him 
by  John  Adams — Charles  Chauncey — His  traits — His  hatred  of 
inaccurate  and  emotional  utterance — His  contempt  for  Whitefield 
— His  discourse  on  "  Enthusiasm  "—His  "  Seasonable  Thoughts  " 
—His  portrait  of  the  enthusiast 199 


CHAPTER   XVI. 

LITERATURE    IN    THE    MIDDLE    COLONIES. 

i.  NEW  YORK  AND  NEW  JERSEY. 

L— Traits  of  life  in  New  York  before  it  became  English— After  it  be- 
came  English — A  many-tongued  community — Metropolitan  indi- 
cations— Education  neglected — Literary  effort  only  in  spasms. . . .  205 

II. — Daniel  Denton,  a  pioneer  of  American  literature  there  —  His 
"  Brief  Description  of  New  York  "—His  pictures  of  nature  and  of 
social  felicity— Thomas  Budd,  of  New  Jersey,  another  pioneer 
writer— His  "  Good  Order  established  in  Pennsylvania  and  New 
Jersey"  —  William  Leeds,  a  refugee  from  Philadelphia  —  His 
"  News  of  a  Trumpet  sounding  in  the  Wilderness  " 207 


yiii  CONTENTS. 

III. — Lewis  Morris  of  Morrisania — His  vivacious  boyhood — Turns  vaga- 
bond— Settlement  into  steady  courses — A  powerful  politician — 
His  literary  inclinations — His  letters  from  London — Provincial 
loyalty  disenchanted  by  going  to  the  metropolis 2ia 

IV. — Cadwallader  Golden — His  long  career — Manifold  activity — Extraor- 
dinary range  of  his  studies  and  of  his  writings — His  "History 
of  the  Five  Indian  Nations  " — Its  characteristics — Its  descriptions 
of  the  savage  virtues 213 

V. — Daniel  Coxe  of  New  Jersey — His  "  Description  of  the  English  Prov- 
ince of  Carolana"  —  His  statesmanly  view  of  colonial  affairs — 
Anticipates  Franklin's  plan  of  a  union  of  the  colonies 215 

VI. — Jonathan  Dickinson,  pulpit-orator,  physician,  teacher,  author — 
First  president  of  the  College  of  New  Jersey — His  personal  traits 
—His  eminence  as  a  theological  debater — His  "  Familiar  Letters,"  216 

VII. — William  Livingston — His  "  Philosophic  Solitude  " — Manner  and 
spirit  of  the  poem — Antithesis  between  his  ideal  life  and  his  real 
one — His  strong  character — Outward  engagements — His  activity 
as  a  pamphleteer  and  as  a  writer  in  the  journals — His  burlesque 
definition  of  his  own  creed — His  "  Review  of  the  Military  Opera- 
tions in  North  America  " — His  "  Verses  to  Eliza  " 218 

VIII.— William  Smith— The  course  of  his  life — His  special  interest  in 
the  history  of  his  native  province — His  "  History  of  New  York  " 
— Criticisms  upon  it — Samuel  Smith  and  his  "  History  of  the  Col- 
ony of  Nova  Caesarea,  or  New  Jersey  " 223 

2.  PENNSYLVANIA. 

I. — The  founders  of  Pennsylvania — The  high  motives  of  their  work — 
Their  social  severity — Intellectual  greatness  of  William  Penn — 
Justice  and  liberality  imparted  by  him  to  the  constitution  of  his 
province — Education  provided  for — First  impulses  to  literary  pro- 
duction in  Pennsylvania — The  development  of  a  literary  spirit  in 
Philadelphia 225 

II. — Gabriel  Thomas — A  brisk  Quaker — His  "  Account "  of  Pennsyl- 
vania and  of  West  New  Jersey — His  enthusiasm  for  his  province 
— Its  freedom  from  lawyers  and  doctors — Its  proffer  of  relief  to 
the  distressed  in  the  old  world— Richard  Frame— His  "  Short 
Description  of  Pennsylvania" — John  Holme — His  "True  Rela- 
.  tion  of  the  Flourishing  State  of  Pennsylvania  " — Jonathan  Dicken- 
son — His  "  God's  Protecting  Providence  Man's  Surest  Help  ". . . .  228 

III.— James  Logan — Penn  invites  him  to  America  and  trusts  to  him  his 
affairs  there — His  fidelity  to  the  Penns  and  to  the  people — Diffi- 
culties of  his  position — His  great  intellectual  attainments — His 
writings,  published  and  unpublished 23! 

IV. — William  Smith — His  influenct  upon  intellectual  culture  in  the 
middle  colonies— Arrives  at  New  York — His  "  General  Idea  of 


CONTENTS.  IX 

the  College  of  Mirania"— Is  invited  to  Philadelphia— His  useful 
career  as  educator,  preacher,  and  writer 233 

V. — A  succession  of  small  writers  —  Jacob  Taylor  —  Henry  Brooke — 
Samuel  Keimer— Aquila  Rose — James  Ralph— George  Webb  and 
bis  "  Bachelors'  Hall  "—Joseph  Breintnal— A  poem  from  "  Titan's 
Almanac"  for  1730  —  Joseph  Shippen  —  John  Webbe — Lewis 
Evans 134 

VI. — Samuel  Davies — Born  and  educated  in  Pennsylvania— Acquires  in 
Virginia  great  fame  as  a  pulpit-orator — His  mission  to  England 
— Becomes  president  of  the  College  of  New  Jersey — His  death — 
Great  popularity  of  his  published  sermons  down  to  the  present 
time — His  traits  as  a  preacher — Passage  from  his  sermon  on  "  The 
General  Resurrection  " 34! 

VII. — Thomas  Godfrey,  the  poet  —  Connection  of  his  father's  family 
with  Franklin  —  His  early  life  and  death — Publication  of  hi* 
"Juvenile  Poems" — His  "  Prince  of  Parthia,"  the  first  American 
drama — A  study  of  it 344 

VIII. — Benjamin  Franklin,  the  first  man  of  letters  in  America  to 
achieve  cosmopolitan  fame  —  His  writings  during  our  present 
period — His  great  career  during  the  subsequent  period. 251 


CHAPTER  XVII. 

LITERATURE   IN   MARYLAND,    VIRGINIA,    AND   THE   SOUTH. 

i.   MARYLAND. 

L — Ebenezer  Cook,  Gentleman — A  rough  satirist — His  "Sot -Weed 
Factor  " — Outline  of  the  poem — Lively  sketches  of  early  Mary- 
land  life — Hospitality — Manners — Indians — A  court-scene — En- 
counter with  a  Quaker  and  a  lawyer — Swindled  by  both — His 
curse  upon  Maryland — His  "  Sot- Weed  Redivivus  " 255 

a.   VIRGINIA. 

L— James  Blair  the  true  founder  of  literary  culture  in  Virginia — His 
coming  to  Virgiria — Forcible  qualities  of  the  man — His  zeal  for 
education — Founds  the  College  of  William  and  Mary — First 
president  of  it — The  Commencement  celebration  in  1700 — His 
writings—'  The  Present  state  of  Virginia  and  the  College" — His 
published  discourses  on  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount — His  literary 
qualities — Passages  from  his  sermons 260 

IL — Robert  F^verley — Parentage — Education  in  England— His  study 
of  the  ".listory  of  Virginia — How  he  came  to  write  it — The  blun- 
ders of  Oldmixon— Reception  of  Beverley's  book — The  author 
himself  seen  in  it— A  noble  Virginian— A  friend  of  the  Indians — 


x  CONTENTS. 

His  love  of  nature — His  style — Humor — Hatred  of  indolence — 
Virginia  hospitality  and  comfort — Calumnies  upon  its  climate..  .  264 

III. — Hugh  Jones,  clergyman,  teacher,  and  school-book  maker — His 
"Present  State  of  Virginia"— Objects  of  the  book — Its  range — 
Its  sarcasms  upon  the  other  colonies — Its  criticisms  upon  Virginia 
— Suggestions  for  improvement 268 

IV. — William  Byrd  of  Westover — His  princely  fortune  and  ways — His 
culture — Foreign  travel — Public  spirit — His  writings — "  History 
of  the  Dividing  Line  " — The  humor  and  literary  grace  of  the  book 
— Amusing  sketch  of  early  history  of  Virginia — The  Christian 
duty  of  marrying  Indian  women — Sarcasms  upon  North  Carolina 
— Notices  of  plants,  animals,  and  forest-life — The  praise  of  gin- 
seng— His  "  Progress  to  the  Mines  " — His  "  Journey  to  the  Land 
of  Eden  " 270 

V. — William  Stith— Various  utilities  of  his  life— His  "  History  of  Vir- 
ginia " — Defects  of  the  work — Its  good  qualities — Bitter  descrip- 
tion of  James  the  First 279 

3.  NORTH  CAROLINA. 

I. — John  Lawson — His  picture  of  Charleston  in  1700 — His  journey  to 
North  Carolina — What  he  saw  and  heard  by  the  way — Becomes 
surveyor-general  of  North  Carolina — His  descriptions  of  that 
province — Its  coast — Sir  Walter  Raleigh's  ship — A  land  of  Ar- 
cadian delight — The  playful  alligator — A  study  of  Indians — Amia- 
bility and  beauty  of  their  women — An  ancient  squaw — A  conjuror 
— Indian  self-possession — The  author's  fate — His  "  Journal  ". . . .  282 

4.  SOUTH  CAROLINA. 

I. — Alexander  Garden,  rector  of  Saint  Philip's,  Charleston— The  force  of 
his  character — Greatness  of  his  influence — His  abhorrence  of 
Whitefield — His  sermons  and  letters  against  Whitefield — Their 
bitterness  and  literary  merit 289 

5.  GEORGIA. 

I— Georgia's  entrance  into  our  literature — A  conflict  with  Oglethorpe — 
The  expert  and  witty  book  of  Patrick  Tailfer  and  others — "  A 
True  and  Historical  Narrative  of  the  Colony  of  Georgia" — Outline 
of  it — A  masterly  specimen  of  satire — Its  mock  dedication  to 
Oglethorpe 292 

CHAPTER   XVIII. 

GENERAL    LITERARY    FORCES    IN    THE    COLONIAL    TIME. 

I.— Tendency  in    each  colony  toward  isolation — Local  peculiarities  in 

thought  and  language — Distribution  of  personal  and  literary  types,   299 


CONTENTS.  xi 

H.— General  tendencies  toward  colonial  fellowship,  founded  on  kinship, 
religion,  commerce,  subjection  to  the  same  sovereign,  peril  from 
the  same  enemies — Special  intellectual  tendencies  toward  colonial 
fellowship,  founded  on  the  rise  of  journalism,  the  establishment 
of  colleges,  and  the  study  of  physical  science 3d 

IH— The  rise  of  American  journalism—"  Public  Occurrences,"  in  1690 
— "The  Boston  News-Letter,"  in  1704— Dates  of  the  founding 
of  the  first  newspapers  in  the  several  colonies — Whole  number 
founded  in  each  colony  before  1765— Description  of  the  colonial 
newspapers  —  Their  effect  on  intercolonial  acquaintance  —  The 
growth  of  literary  skill  in  them — Early  literary  magazines — First 
one  founded  by  Franklin,  in  1741 — "The  American  Magazine," 
at  Boston—"  The  Independent  Reflector,"  at  New  York—"  The 
American  Magazine,"  at  Philadelphia. 303 

IV. — Early  American  colleges — Seven  founded  before  1765 — Harvard, 
William  and  Mary.  Yale,  New  Jersey.  King's,  Philadelphia,  Rhode 
Island — Grade  and  extent  of  instruction  in  them — Predominant 
study  of  the  ancient  classics — Requirements  for  admission  at  Har- 
vard and  Yale — Latin  in  ordinary  use  in  the  college* — Range  of 
studies — Expertness  in  the  use  of  the  ancient  languages — How 
the  early  colleges  led  to  colonial  union — Their  vast  influence  on 
literary  culture — Their  promotion  of  the  spiritual  conditions  on 
which  the  growth  of  literature  depends — One  effect  of  their  work 
seen  in  the  state-papers  of  the  Revolutionary  period — Lord  Chat- 
ham's tribute 306 

Vv— Study  of  physical  science  in  America— Begun  by  the  earliest  Ameri- 
cans—Eminence of  John  Winthrop  of  Connecticut— His  connec- 
tions with  the  Royal  Society— Fitz  John  Winthrop— Stimulus  given 
to  study  of  nature  in  New  England— Increase  Mather— John  Wil- 
liams—Cotton Mather— Jared  Eliot— Joseph  Dudley— Paul  Dud- 
ley—Study of  science  in  Virginia— John  Banister— William  Byrd 
—Mark  Catesby— John  Clayton- John  Mitchell— John  Bartram 
of  Pennsylvania— John  Winthrop  of  Harvard  College— The  inter- 
colonial correspondence  of  scientific  men — Culmination  of  scien- 
tific research  between  1740  and  1765— The  brilliant  services  of 
Franklin— America  instructing  Europe  in  electricity— Leading 
•cientific  men  in  the  several  colonies —  Scientific  fellowship  a 
preparation  for  political  fellowship— Impulse  given  by  science  to 
literature 3»<> 

VL— Great  change  in  the  character  of  American  literature  after  1765.  -  -  3*7 


SECOND     COLONIAL     PERIOD. 

1676-1768. 


M 

ii 


<*      O 
S      O 

OC     u 


Writers  of  Narration 
and  Description. 


Historical   and    Bio- 
graphical Writers. 


Theological  and  Re- 
ligious Writers. 


THOMAS  BUDD. 

WILLIAM  BYRD.  •"" 

DANIEL  COXE. 

JONATHAN  DICKENSON,  of  Pa. 

DANIEL  DENTON. 

LEWIS  EVANS. 

RICHARD  FRAME. 

HUGH  JONES. 

SARAH  KEMBLE  KNIGHT. 

JOHN  LAWSON. 

MARY  ROWLANDSON. 

PATRICK  TAILFER. 

GABRIEL  THOMAS. 

JOHN  WILLIAMS. 

ROBERT  BEVERLEY. 
BENJAMIN  CHURCH. 
CADWALLADER  GOLDEN. 
JOHN  CALLENDER. 
THOMAS  CLAP. 
WILLIAM  DOUGLASS. 
WILLIAM  HUBBARD. 
INCREASE  MATHER. 
COTTON  MATHER.  - — " 
SAMUEL  MATHER. 
SAMUEL  NILES. 
SAMUEL  PENHALLOW. 
THOMAS  PRINCE. 
WILLIAM  SMITH,  of  N.  Y. 
SAMUEL  SMITH. 
WILLIAM  STITH. 
EBENEZER  TURELL. 

JAMES  BLAIR. 
MATHER  BYLES. 
JOHN  BARNARD. 
CHARLES  CHAUNCKY. 
BENJAMIN  COLMAN. 
THOMAS  CLAP. 

JONATHAN  DICKINSON,  of  N.  J. 
SAMUEL  DAVIES. 
JONATHAN  EDWARDS.  - 
ALEXANDER  GARDEN. 
JOHN  HIGGINSON. 
WILLIAM  HUBBARD. 
SAMUEL  JOHNSON. 
INCREASE  MATHER. 
COTTON  MATHER."' 
SAMUEL  MATHER. 
JONATHAN  MAYHEW. 
URIAN  OAKES. 
THOMAS  PRINCE. 
WILLIAM  SMITH,  of  Pa. 
SAMUEL  SKWALL. 
SOLOMON  STODDARD. 
WILLIAM  STOUGHTON. 
SAMUEL  WILLARD. 


Writers  upon  Science.  « 


Miscellaneous   Prose 
Writers. 


Writers  of  Verse. 


JOHN  BANISTER. 

JOHN  HARTKAM. 

JOHN  CLAYTON. 

CADWALLADER  GOLDEN. 

THOMAS  CLAP. 

WILLIAM  DOUGLASS. 

JONATHAN  EDWARDS. 

JARED  EUOT. 

BENJAMIN  FRANKLIN.  — 

ALEXANDER  GARDEN,  M.D. 

SAMUEL  JOHNSON. 

TAMES  LOGAN. 

JOHN  MITCHELL. 

JOHN  WINTHROP,  of  Harvard  Coll. 

NATHANIEL  AMES. 
ROBERT  CALEF. 
JEREMIAH  DUMMER. 
BENJAMIN  FRANKLIN. 
DANIEL  LEEDS. 
WILLIAM  LIVINGSTON. 
LEWIS  MORRIS. 
WILLIAM  SMITH,  of  Pa. 
SAMUEL  SEWALL. 
JOSHUA  SCOTTOW. 
JOHN  WEBBE, 
JOHN  WISE. 

JOHN  ADAMS. 

JOSEPH  BREINTNAL. 

HENRY  BROOKE. 

MATHER  BYLES. 

BENJAMIN  COLMAN. 

EBENEZER  COOK. 

PETER  FOLGER. 

THOMAS  GODFREY. 

JOSEPH  GREEN. 

FRANCIS  KNAPP. 

WILLIAM  LIVINGSTON. 

JOHN  M  AVI  KM 

NICHOLAS  NOYES. 

JOHN  NORTON. 

URIAN  OAKES. 

PETER  OLIVER. 

JOHN  OSBORN. 

AUTHORS  OF  PIETAS  ET  GRATULATIO 

AQUILA  ROSE. 

JOHN  ROGERS. 

JOHN  SECCOMB. 

JOSEPH  SHIPPEN. 

JANE  TURELL. 

BENJAMIN  TOMPSON. 

JACOB  TAYLOR. 

GEORGE  WEBB. 

MICHAEL  WIGGLESWORTH. 

SAMUEL  WIGGLESWORTH. 

ROGER  WOLCOTT. 


CHAPTER  XI. 

NEW  ENGLAND:  THE  VERSE-WRITERS. 

L. — The  two  literary  periods  in  our  colonial  age — Their  points  of  distinc- 
tion— The  times  and  the  men — Our  intended  line  of  march  through  the 
second  period. 

II.— John  Norton— His  poem  on  the  death  of  Anne  Bradstreet — John  Roger* 
— His  poetic  praise  of  Anne  Bradstreet. 

III.— Urian  Oakes— His  high  literary  gifts— His  elegy  on  the  death  of  Thomas 
Shepard. 

IV.— Peter  Folger.  the  ballad-writer— Benjamin  Tompson,  the  satirist. 

V. — Michael  Wigglesworth.  the  sturdy  rhymer  o£_New  England  Calvinism— 
His  great  popularity — Puts  into  verse  the  glooms  and  the  comforts  of  the 
prevailing  faith — The  realistic  poet  of  hell-fire — "  God's  Controversy  with 
New  England  "—"  Meat  out  of  the  Eater" — "The  Day  of  Doom" — 
Synopsis  of  the  latter  poem — Its  wide  diffusion  and  influence — His  son, 
Samuel  Wigglesworth.  a  true  poet—"  A  Funeral  Song"  by  the  latter. 

VL — Nicholas  Noyes,  the  last  and  greatest  /  our  Fantastic.-, — His  fine  per. 
sonal  career — The  monstrosities  of  his  muse — Prefatory  poem  on  the 
"  Magnalia  " — Lines  on  John  Higginson — Elegy  on  Joseph  Green — Verses 
on  the  painful  malady  of  a  Reverend  friend. 

VII.— Strong  influence  in  America  of  the  contemporary  English  poets,  es- 
pecially Pope,  Blackmore,  Watts,  Thomson,  Young— Echoes  of  them  in 
Francis  Knapp,  Benjamin  Colman,  Jane  Turell,  Mather  Byles — The 
career  and  poetry  of  Roger  Wolcott— His  Connecticut  epic — His  "  Poeti- 
cal Meditations." 

VIII. — Humorous  poetry — John  Seccomb  and  his  burlesque  verses— Th« 
facetiousness  of  Joseph  Green— His  impromptus — His  "  Entertainment 
for  a  Winter  Evening." 

IX.— War-verses— Popular  ballads— "  Lovewell's  Fight"— Tilden's  "  Mis 
cellaneous  Poems"— John  Maylem,  Philo-Bellum — His  "Conquest  ol 
Louisburg  "—His  "  Gallic  Perfidy." 

X.— A  group  of  serious  singers — John  Adams— His  accompl  shments  and 
poetry—"  Poems  by  Several  Hands  " — Peter  Oliver,  the  literary  politician 
— His  poem  in  honor  of  Josiah  Willard. 

XI.—"  Pietas  et  Gratulatio  "—Its  occasion— Its  authors — A  burst  of  American 
loyalty  to  the  English  monarch* — Its  Greek  and  Latin  verses— Its  English 
verses— Apotheosis  of  George  the  Second— Salutation  to  George  the  Third. 

I. 

I  HAVE  taken  the  year  sixteen  hundred  and  seventy-six 
as  the  year  of  partition  between  the  two  periods  into  which 

5 


6  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

our  colonial  age  seems  to  fall.  By  a  coincidence  that 
is  almost  dramatic,  that  year  proved  to  be  one  of  spa- 
cious import  for  both  the  great  English  communities  then 
planted  in  America,  and  then  holding  within  themselves 
the  types  and  the  hopes  of  all  possible  English  civilization 
in  the  new  world.  Alike  for  Virginia  and  for  New  Eng- 
land, it  was  a  year  in  which  most  doleful  mischief,  long 
gathering  force  from  the  crimes  and  the  blunders  of  men, 
came  to  its  culmination,  exploded,  and  passed  away  ; — a 
year  of  fright,  of  fury,  of  outcry  and  blood  and  battle-agony, 
and  at  last  of  the  sort  of  silence  that  is  called  peace.  In 
that  year,  Virginia  saw  the  crisis  and  close  of  the  patriotic 
insurrection  of  its  own  people  under  the  hero,  Nathaniel 
Bacon  ;  in  that  year,  New  England  saw  the  crisis  and  close 
of  the  conspiracy  of  its  exasperated  Indians  under  the 
hero,  Philip.  For  those  two  central  English  communities 
in  America,  and  for  all  other  English  communities  that 
should  afterward  be  grouped  around  them  or  issue  from 
them,  the  year  sixteen  hundred  and  seventy-six  established 
two  very  considerable  facts,  namely,  that  English  colonists 
in  America  could  be  so  provoked  as  to  make  physical  re- 
sistance to  the  authority  of  England  ;  and,  second,  that 
English  colonists  in  America  could,  in  the  last  resort,  put 
down  any  combination  of  Indians  that  might  be  formed 
against  them.  In  other  words,  it  was  then  made  evi- 
dent that  English  colonists  would  certainly  be  safe  in  the 
new  world,  and  also  that  they  would  not  always  be 
colonists.  That  year  completed  the  proofs  that  a  certain 
uncounted  throng  of  articulating  bipeds,  known  as  Amer- 
icans— together  with  the  words  that  they  should  articu- 
late— were  to  be  endured  on  this  planet,  for  some  ages  to 
come. 

Let  us  turn  away,  now,  from  the  significance  of  those 
events  which,  at  the  end  of  a  long  and  troubled  sequence, 
came  to  an  issue  in  sixteen  hundred  and  seventy-six,  and 
glance  for  a  moment  at  the  men  and  women  who,  in  that 
year,  constituted  the  larger  part  of  the  population  of  the 


THE  TWO  COLONIAL  PERIODS,  7 

English  colonies.  Here,  at  length,  we  confront  a  new 
race  of  beings  under  the  sun :  people  who  loved  England, 
but  had  never  seen  England  ;  who  always  called  England 
home,  but  had  never  been  at  home ;  who  spoke  and  wrote 
the  English  language,  but  had  learned  to  do  so  three  or 
four  thousand  miles  from  the  island  in  which  that  lan- 
guage had  been  hitherto  cooped  up.  Before  sixteen  hun- 
dred and  seventy-six,  the  new  civilization  in  America  was 
principally  in  the  hands  of  Americans  born  in  England ; 
after  sixteen  hundred  and  seventy-six,  it  was  principally 
in  the  hands  of  Americans  born  in  America,  and  the  sub- 
jects of  such  training  as  was  to  be  had  here.  Our  first 
colonial  period,  therefore,  transmits  to  us  a  body  of  writ- 
ings produced  by  immigrant  Americans  ;  preserving  for 
us  the  ideas,  the  moods,  the  efforts,  the  very  phrases,  of 
the  men  who  founded  the  American  nation ;  representing 
to  us,  also,  the  earliest  literary  results  flowing  from  the  re- 
actions of  life  in  the  new  world  upon  an  intellectual  cul- 
ture formed  in  the  old  world.  Our  second  colonial  period 
does  more  ;  it  transmits  to  us  a  body  of  writings,  produced 
in  the  main  by  the  American  children  of  those  immigrants, 
and  representing  the  earliest  literary  results  flowing  from 
the  reactions  of  life  in  the  new  world  upon  an  intellectual 
culture  that  was  itself  formed  in  the  new  world. 

Our  first  colonial  period,  just  seventy  years  long,  we 
have  now  studied  with  full  and  earnest  care;  we  have 
held  up  before  our  eyes  the  tattered  and  time-stained 
memorials  of  its  literary  activity;  we  have  listened  atten- 
tively to  its  multitudinous  voices,  hushed  by  death  two 
centuries  ago.  Each  reader  has  now  before  him  the  mate- 
rials out  of  which  to  construct  for  himself  the  praise,  or 
the  contempt,  which  he  is  willing  to  bestow  upon  that 
period.  For  my  part,  I  have  no  apology  to  make  for  it : 
I  think  it  needs  none.  It  was  a  period  principally  engaged 
in  other  tasks  than  the  tasks  of  the  pen ;  it  laid,  quietly 
and  well,  the  foundation  of  a  new  social  structure  that 
was  to  cover  a  hemisphere,  was  to  give  shelter  and  com- 


8  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

fort  to  myriads  of  the  human  race,  was  to  endure  to  cen- 
turies far  beyond  the  gropings  of  our  guesswork.  Had  it 
done  that  deed  alone,  and  left  no  written  word  at  all,  not 
cay  man  since  then  could  have  wondered  ;  still  less  could 
any  man  have  flung  at  it  the  reproach  of  intellectual  leth- 
argy or  neglect.  But  if,  besides  what  it  did  in  the  found- 
ing of  a  new  commonwealth,  we  consider  what  it  also  did 
in  the  founding  of  a  new  literature — the  largeness  of 
that  special  work,  the  downright  merit  of  it — we  shall  find 
it  hard  to  withhold  from  that  period  the  homage  of  our 
admiration. 

From  the  year  sixteen  hundred  and  seventy-six,  when 
our  first  colonial  period  ends,  there  stretches  onward  a 
space  of  just  eighty-nine  years,  at  the  end  of  which  the 
American  colonies  underwent  a  swift  and  portentous 
change, — losing,  all  at  once,  their  colonial  content,  and 
passing  suddenly  into  the  earlier  and  the  intellectual  stage 
of  their  struggle  for  independence.  This  space  of  eighty- 
nine  years  forms,  of  course,  our  second  colonial  period  ; 
and  it  is  this  which  we  are  now  to  study. 

For  the  most  of  this  period,  and  for  most  purposes  of 
investigation,  our  history  is  but  a  bundle  of  anecdotes 
telling  of  detached  groups  of  communities, — each  group 
working  out  its  own  life  in  its  own  way,  and  uttering  in 
some  fashion  of  frank  speech  its  own  uppermost  thought. 
Here,  at  the  farthest  north,  we  rest  our  eyes  upon  the 
New  England  group  of  communities ;  thence,  passing 
along  the  coast,  we  encounter  the  group  of  the  middle 
colonies,  New  York,  New  Jersey,  Pennsylvania;  finally, 
the  southern  group,  Maryland,  Virginia,  the  two  Carolinas, 
and  Georgia.  Between  the  several  members  of  each  group 
there  were,  perhaps,  special  intimacies,  domestic,  commer- 
cial, military,  religious ;  but  between  the  several  groups 
there  were  almost  no  intimacies  at  all. 

Moving  across  this  tract  of  time,  we  shall  make  research 
for  whatever  writings  were  produced  within  it  by  these 
clustered  populations  of  Americans.  It  will  be  convenient 


JOHN  NORTON.  9 

for  us  to  begin  with  New  England,  and  to  proceed  in  geo- 
graphical order  southward. 

Of  nearly  all  the  writers  that  we  are  now  to  deal  with, 
it  may  be  said  that  they  did  their  most  significant  work 
within  the  limits  which  we  have  assigned  to  our  second 
colonial  period  ;  and  yet  some  of  them,  the  eldest,  began 
their  work  before  that  period  began  ;  and  others,  the 
youngest,  perhaps  continued  their  work  after  that  period 
ended.  In  order  to  give  a  satisfactory  account  of  them, 
we  shall  occasionally  find  ourselves  flitting  back,  and  com- 
mitting trespass  upon  the  territory  which  we  profess  to 
have  abandoned,  or  even,  it  may  be,  advancing  into  that 
territory  to  which  in  this  volume  we  shall  not  try  to  lay 
claim. 

The  topic  that  last  engaged  our  notice,  in  the  literary 
period  just  closed,  was  the  verse-writers  of  New  England  ; 
and  this  topic  is  the  one  with  which  we  shall  begin  our 
study  of  the  period  now  to  be  opened, — thus  taking  up  the 
thread  of  the  story  at  the  very  point  where  we  laid  it 
down.  We  became  somewhat  acquainted  with  the  poet, 
Anne  Bradstreet,  the  only  person  of  an  avowed  and  special 
vocation  in  poetry  that  New  England  had  in  its  earliest 
age.  The  first  two  poets  that  we  meet  on  the  threshold 
of  our  new  studies,  were  men  who  had  grown  up  in  New 
England  under  the  influence  of  Anne  Bradstreet 's  fame; 
who  were,  in  some  sense,  her  literary  children  ;  and  who 
have  left  verses  in  praise  of  her,  that  constitute  their  own 
best  title  to  praise. 

II. 

Of  these  two  poets,  one  was  John  Norton,  nephew  of 
the  famous  Boston  minister  of  the  same  name;  born  in 
1651  ;  graduated  at  Harvard  in  1671;  pastor  of  the  first 
church  at  Hingham  from  1678  till  his  death  in  1716;  dur- 
ing all  that  time  publishing  only  an  election  sermon,  in 
1708,  and  still  earlier,  in  1678,  a  poem  occasioned  by  the 
death  of  Anne  Bradstreet.  It  is  this  poem,  "A  Funeral 


10  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

Elogy  upon  that  pattern  and  patron  of  virtue,"  that  will 
preserve  for  him  a  high  and  permanent  memory  among  the 
few  real  singers  of  our  colonial  time.  We  know  not  what 
else  he  did  in  verse ;  but,  certainly,  the  force  and  beauty 
that  are  in  this  little  poem  could  not  have  been  caught 
at  one  grasp  of  the  hand.  His  poetical  strokes  were  by 
no  means  sure ;  the  literary  taint  of  the  time  had  smitten 
him  ;  and  even  in  this  sorrowful  and  stately  chant,  he  once 
or  twice  slipped  into  grotesqueness  of  conceit,  and  fune- 
real frivolity.  Yet,  here  is  something  more  than  mechanic 
poetry,  something  other  than  inspiration  of  the  thumb- 
nail. To  this  young  American  scholar  and  poet,  just  then 
at  the  opening  of  his  active  career,  his  mind  brimming 
with  the  imagery  of  the  antique  classics,  the  death  of 
Anne  Bradstreet — their  one  glorious  example  of  poetic 
power  in  New  England — seemed  to  come  as  a  sort  of 
elemental  loss,  a  bereavement  and  a  darkening  of  the  earth, 
at  which  the  sky  itself  and  all  its  splendid  tenants  would 
put  on  mourning.  Therefore,  with  the  fine  exaggerating 
speech  of  his  passion,  he  cries  out : 

"  Ask  not  why  the  great  glory  of  the  sky, 
That  gilds  the  stars  with  heavenly  alchemy, 

Ask  not  the  reason  of  his  ecstasy, 

Paleness  of  late,  in  midnoon  majesty  ; 

Why  that  the  pale-faced  Empress  of  the  night 

Disrobed  her  brother  of  his  glorious  light. 

Did  not  the  language  of  the  stars  foretell 

A  mournful  scene,  when  they  with  tears  did  swell  ? 

Did  not  the  glorious  people  of  the  sky 

Seem  sensible  of  future  misery  ? 

Behold  how  tears  flow  from  the  learne'd  hill  ; 
How  the  bereaved  Nine  do  daily  fill 
The  bosom  of  the  fleeting  air  with  groans 
And  woful  accents,  which  witness  their  moans." 

As  he  dwells  upon  it,  her  death  seems  so  cruel  a  theft 
from  the  world  of  what  the  world  could  ill  spare,  that 
his  grief  passes  into  wrath : 


JOHN  NORTON.  II 

*  Some  do  for  anguish  weep ;  for  anger,  I, 
That  Ignorance  should  live,  and  Art  should  die. 
Black,  fatal,  dismal,  inauspicious  day  ! 

Be  it  the  first  of  miseries  to  all, 

Or  last  of  life  defamed  for  funeral. 

When  this  day  yearly  comes,  let  every  one 

Cast  in  their  urn  the  black  and  dismal  stone. 

Succeeding  years,  as  they  their  circuit  go, 

Leap  o'er  this  day,  as  a  sad  time  of  woe." 

Then,  as  this  indignant  gust  has  uttered  itself,  he  turns 
in  direct  and  reverent  salutation  to  the  dead  poet,  for 
whom  he  mourns : 

••  Grave  Matron,  whoso  seeks  to  blazon  thee, 
Needs  not  make  use  of  wit's  false  heraldry  ; 
Whoso  should  give  thee  all  thy  worth,  would  swell 
So  high,  as  'twould  turn  the  world  infidel. 

To  write  is  easy ;  but  to  write  on  thee, 
Truth  would  be  thought  to  forfeit  modesty. 

Virtue  ne'er  dies  :  time  will  a  poet  raise, 

Born  under  letter  stars,  shall  sing  thy  praise. 

Praise  her  who  list,  yet  he  shall  be  a  debtor; 

For  Art  ne'er  feigned,  nor  Nature  framed,  a  better. 

Her  virtues  were  so  great,  that  they  do  raise 

A  work  to  trouble  fame,  astonish  praise. 

Beneath  her  feet,  pale  Envy  bites  her  chain, 

And  Poison-Malice  whets  her  sting  in  vain. 

Let  every  laurel,  every  myrtle  bough, 

Be  stript  for  leaves  to  adorn  and  load  her  brow : 

Victorious  wreaths,  which,  'cause  they  never  fade, 

Wise  elder  times  for  kings  and  poets  made. 

Let  not  her  happy  memory  e'er  lack 

Its  worth  in  Fame's  eternal  almanac, 

Which  none  shall  read,  but  straight  their  loss  deplore, 

And  blame  their  fates  they  were  not  born  before."1 


1  The  entire  poem  is  in  "  The  Works  of  Anne  Bradstreet,"  J.   H.  Ellis'* 
od.  409-413- 


12  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITER  A  TURE. 

Somewhat  older  than  John  Norton,  but  associated  with 
him  in  poetic  genius  and  in  devotion  to  Anne  Bradstreet, 
was  John  Rogers  ;  a  strong  and  famous  man  in  his  day  ; 
one  of  the  early  presidents  of  Harvard  College ;  in  his  own 
person  an  example  of  that  versatility  of  gifts  which  Ameri- 
can life  has  always  had  in  it  some  peculiar  force  to  develop, 
— preacher,  physician,  linguist,  scientist,  educator,  poet.  In 
1649,  at  the  age  of  eighteen,  he  was  graduated  at  Harvard 
College;  from  1656  to  1683,  he  lived  at  Ipswich,  physician 
both  to  the  bodies  and  to  the  souls  of  men ;  in  August, 
1683,  he  was  inaugurated  as  president  of  Harvard  College  ; 
and  on  the  second  of  July,  1684,  during  an  eclipse  of  the 
sun,  he  died.  The  tradition  of  him  brings  to  us  a  man  of 
uncommon  grace  of  mind  and  sweetness  of  temper,  of  all 
gentlemanly  and  scholarly  accomplishments ;  in  fact,  "  a 
treasury  of  benevolence,  a  storehouse  of  theologic  learn- 
ing, a  library  of  the  choicest  literature,  a  living  system  of 
medicine,  an  embodiment  of  integrity,  a  repository  of 
faith,  a  pattern  of  Christian  sympathy,  a  garner  of  all 
virtues." *  Of  course,  his  portrait  hangs  upon  the  walls 
of  the  "  Magnalia,"  2 — a  portrait  to  which  is  attached  the 
inevitable  Matheresque  ear-mark,  as  follows.  One  day, 
while  president  of  the  college,  it  happened  that  his  prayer 
in  chapel  was  only  about  half  as  long  as  usual, — a  phenom- 
enon agreeable,  doubtless,  to  the  students,  but  quite  in- 
explicable to  them.  Indeed,  at  the  moment,  no  human 
being  knew  why  that  presidential  prayer  had  come  to  an 
end  so  soon  ;  but,  as  Cotton  Mather  judiciously  remarks, 
"  Heaven  knew  the  reason."  The  college  was  on  fire ; 
and  had  it  not  been  for  the  inspired  brevity  of  the  presi- 
dent's devotions  that  day,  it  "  had  been  irrevocably  laid  in 
ashes."  One  almost  shudders  now  to  contemplate  the 
fascinating  motive  to  collegiate  incendiarism,  which  this 


1  As  may  be  imagined,  this  quotation  is  originally  from   his  tomb-stone  ; 
in  spite  of  which,  there  is  reason  to  believe  that  it  is,  in  the  main,  true. 
a  Volume  II.  16-17. 


JOHN  ROGERS.  1 5 

memorable  providence  must  have  suggested  thencefor- 
ward, for  many  generations,  to  the  undergraduate  mind, 
— a  possible  explanation,  indeed,  of  the  numerous  confla 
grations  which,  since  that  time,  have  desolated  the  Har. 
vard  Yard. 

Nearly  all  memorials  of  John  Rogers  s  work  as  a  writer 
have  perished.  One  little  poem  of  his,  however,  remains, 
a  poem  addressed  to  Anne  Bradstreet,  and,  probably,  first 
published  in  1678 ;  a  monument  of  the  keen  enthusiasm 
which  the  writings  of  that  admirable  woman  awakened 
among  the  bright  young  scholars  of  New  England,  during 
the  latter  part  of  her  own  life  and  for  some  years  after- 
ward ;  a  monument,  also,  of  its  author's  literary  culture, 
and  of  his  really  high  faculty  of  poetic  utterance.  The 
framework  of  this  poem  is  a  modified  form  of  the  Chauce 
nan  stanza,  the  variation  being  very  sweet  and  effective . 
the  order  of  the  rhymes  is  slightly  changed,  and  the  seventh 
line  rolls  on  into  a  sonorous  Alexandrine.  Though,  in  one 
place,  the  poem  lapses  into  a  conceit  that  is  gross,  and,  in 
fact,  damnable,  upon  the  whole  it  is  very  noble  ;  it  is  of 
high  and  sustained  imaginative  expression  ;  it  shows,  like- 
wise, that  this  Puritan  scholar  of  our  little  college  in  the 
New  England  wilderness,  had  not  only  conversed  to  good 
purpose  with  the  classics  of  pagan  antiquity,  but  had  even 
dared  to  overleap  the  barriers  interposed  by  his  own  sect 
between  themselves  and  the  more  dreadful  Christian  clas. 
sics  of  the  Elizabethan  singers : 

"Madam,  twice  through  the  Muses'  grove  I  walked, 
Under  your  blissful  bowers,  I  shrouding  there. 

It  seemed  with  nymphs  of  Helicon  I  talked; 

For  there  those  sweet-lipped  sisters  sporting  were; 

Apollo  with  his  sacred  lute  sate  by; 

On  high  they  made  their  heavenly  sonnets  fly; 

Posies  around  they  strewed,  of  sweetest  poesy. 

Twice  have  I  drunk  the  nectar  of  your  lines, 
Which  high  sublimed  my  mean-born  fantasy. 


14  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITER  A  TURE. 

Flushed  with  these  streams  of  your  Maronian  wines, 

Above  myself  rapt  to  an  ecstasy, 
Methought  I  was  upon  Mount  Hybla's  top, 
There  where  I  might  those  fragrant  flowers  lop, 
Whence  did  sweet  odors  flow,  and  honey-spangles  droffc 
<t\ 

Nor  barking  satyr's  breath,  nor  dreary  clouds, 
Exhaled  from  Styx,  their  dismal  drops  distil 

Within  these  fairy,  flowery  fields ;  nor  shrouds 
The  screeching  night-raven,  with  his  shady  quill; 

But  lyric  strings  here  Orpheus  nimbly  hits, 

Orion  on  his  saddled  dolphin  sits, 

Chanting  as  every  humor,  age,  and  season  fits. 

Here  silver  swans  with  nightingales  set  spells, 
Which  sweetly  charm  the  traveller,  and  raise 

Earth's  earthed  monarchs  from  their  hidden  cells. 
And  to  appearance  summon  lapsed  days. 

There  heavenly  air  becalms  the  swelling  frays, 

And  fury  fell  of  elements,  allays, 

By  paying  every  one  due  tribute  of  his  praise. 

This  seemed  the  site  of  all  those  verdant  vales, 
And  purled  springs,  whereat  the  nymphs  do  play; 

With  lofty  hills  where  poets  read  their  tales 

To  heavenly  vaults,  which  heavenly  sounds  repay 

By  echo's  sweet  rebound  ;  here  ladies  kiss, 

Circling,  nor  songs  nor  dance's  circle  miss; 

But  whilst  those  sirens  sung,  I  sunk  in  sea  of  bliss. 


Your  only  hand,  those  posies  did  compose ; 

Your  head,  the  source  whence  all  those  springs  did 
Your  voice,  whence  change's  sweetest  notes  arose ; 

Your  feet,  that  kept  the  dance  alone,  I  trow. 
Then  vail  your  bonnets,  poetasters  all ; 
Strike  lower  amain,  and  at  these  humbly  fall, 
And  deem  yourselves  advanced  to  be  her  pedestaL 

Should  all  with  lowly  conges  laurels  bring; 

Waste  Flora's  magazine,  to  find  a  wreath, 
Or  Peneus'  banks,  'twere  too  mean  offering  : 

Your  muse  a  fairer  garland  doth  bequeath 


URIAN  OAKES.  1 5 

To  guard  your  fairer  front :  here  'tis  your  name 
Shall  stand  immarbled ;  this,  your  little  frame, 
Shall  great  Colossus  be,  to  your  eternal  fame."  ' 

III. 

The  same  class  of  college-boys  that  produced,  in  John 
Rogers,  a  poet  and  a  Harvard  president,  produced,  like- 
wise, in  Urian  Oakes,  another  poet  and  another  Harvard 
president.  The  latter,  born  in  1631,  was  reared  in  the 
woods  of  Concord — an  air,  then  and  since  then,  quicken- 
ing to  fine  and  rugged  thought.  Though  of  diminutive 
body,  he  gave  evidence  from  childhood  of  a  large  and 
gracious  intellect ;  in  college  he  won  high  reputation  for 
scholarship ;  when  but  nineteen  years  old,  he  published  a 
set  of  astronomical  calculations,  prefixed  by  this  motto  of 
modest  reference  to  himself  and  his  brochure : 

"  Parvum  parva  decent,  sed  inest  sua  gratia  parvis," 

Upon  his  graduation,  he  devoted  himself  to  theology, 
and  began  to  preach.  Soon,  however,  yielding  to  the 
attractions  of  England  under  the  Protectorate,  he  went 
thither,  and  accepted  the  living  of  Titchfield,  Hampshire, 
where  he  remained  until  the  year  of  expulsion,  1662. 
Nevertheless,  he  continued  to  find  in  England  both  pro- 
tection and  clerical  employment;  but  in  1671,  upon  ur- 
gent solicitation,  he  returned  to  this  country,  and  became 
pastor  of  the  church  at  Cambridge.  In  1675,  he  added  to 
his  duties  as  pastor  of  that  church,  those  of  president  of 
Harvard  College.  In  1681,  in  the  full  splendor  of  his 
powers  and  of  his  usefulness,  he  died. 

A  study  of  the  writings  of  this  man,  will  be  likely  to 
convince  any  one  that  there  is  less  than  the  usual  mortu- 
ary extravagance  in  the  sentence  of  Increase  Mather,  that 


1  This  noble  poem  is  reprinted  in  N.  E.  Hist,  and  Geneal.  Reg.  V.  138  ;  and  in 
Works  of  Anne  Bradstreet,  J.  H.  Ellis's  ed.  93-96.  I  have  quoted  from  the 
latter. 


!  6  HIS  TOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LI  TEH  A  TURE. 

Urian  Oakes  "was  one  of  the  greatest  lights  that  ever 
shone  in  this  part  of  the  world,  or  that  is  ever  like  to  arise 
in  this  horizon."1  He  seems  to  have  been  what  another 
contemporary2  called  him,  a  man  of  great  "  art  and  grace," 
as  well  as  "  a  delightful,  loving,  profitable,  fast,  and  faith- 
ful friend."  He  was  distinguished  in  his  day  for  the  un' 
surpassed  elegance  and  fluency  of  his  Latin  ;  and  with 
respect  to  his  English,  it  is,  perhaps,  the  richest  prose 
style, — it  furnishes  the  most  brilliant  examples  of  origi- 
nality, breadth,  and  force  of  thought,  set  aglow  by  flame  of 
passion,  by  flame  of  imagination,  to  be  met  with  in  our 
sermon-literature  from  the  settlement  of  the  country  down 
to  the  Revolution.3 

But  the  splendid  literary  capacity  of  this  early  Ameri- 
can— this  product  of  our  pioneer  and  autochthonous  cul- 
ture— is  seen  in  this  :  as  his  sermons  are  among  the  noblest 
specimens  of  prose  to  be  met  with,  in  that  class  of  writ- 
ings, during  the  colonial  time,  so  the  one  example  that  is 
left  to  us  of  his  verse,  reaches  the  highest  point  touched 
by  American  poetry,  during  the  same  era.  The  poem 
thus  referred  to,  is  an  elegy  upon  the  death  of  a  man  to 
whom  the  poet  seems  to  have  been  bound  by  the  tender- 
est  friendship,  Thomas  Shepard,  minister  of  the  church  in 
Charlestown,  a  man  of  great  gifts  and  of  great  influence, 
who  died  in  December,  1677,  at  the  age  of  forty-two.  It 
was  within  a  few  days  after  the  death  of  this  friend,  that 
Oakes  published  his  elegy, — a  poem  in  fifty-two  six-lined 
stanzas ;  not  without  some  mechanical  defects  ;  blurred 
also  by  some  patches  of  the  prevailing  theological  jargon  ; 
yet,  upon  the  whole,  affluent,  stately,  pathetic ;  beautiful 
and  strong  with  the  beauty  and  strength  of  true  imagi- 
native vision : 


1  Mather's  Preface  to  Oakes's  Fast  Day  Sermon,  published  1682. 
1  John  Sherman,  in  Preface  to  Oakes's  Second  Artillery-Sermon,    pub- 
lished 1682. 

1  As  a  sermon-writer,  Urian  Oakes  is  particularly  noticed  in  Chapter  XV. 


URIAN  OAKES. 

"  Reader  !  I  am  no  poet ;  but  I  grieve. 
Behold  here  what  that  passion  can  do, 
That  forced  a  verse,  without  Apollo's  leave, 
And  whether  the  learned  Sisters  would  or  no. 
My  griefs  can  hardly  speak  ;  my  sobbing  muse 
In  broken  terms  our  sad  bereavement  rues. 

Oh  !  that  I  were  a  poet  now  in  grain  I 

How  would  I  invocate  the  Muses  all 

To  deign  their  presence,  lend  their  flowing  vein, 

And  help  to  grace  dear  Shepard's  funeral ! 

How  would  I  paint  our  griefs !  and  succors  borrow 
From  art  and  fancy,  to  limn  out  our  sorrow. 

Now  could  I  wish — if  wishing  would  obtain — 

The  sprightliest  efforts  of  poetic  rage, 

To  vent  my  griefs,  make  others  feel  my  pain, 

For  this  loss  of  the  glory  of  our  age. 
Here  is  a  subject  for  the  loftiest  verse 
That  ever  waited  on  the  bravest  hearse. 

And  could  my  pen  ingeniously  distil 
The  purest  spirits  of  a  sparkling  wit, 
In  rare  conceits,  the  quintessence  of  skill 
In  elegiac  strains— none  like  to  it — 

I  should  think  all  too  little  to  condole 

The  fatal  loss  to  us  of  such  a  soul. 

Could  I  take  highest  flights  of  fancy  ;  soar 
Aloft  ;  if  wit's  monopoly  were  mine  ; 
All  would  be  too  low,  too  light,  too  poor, 
To  pay  due  tribute  to  this  great  divine. 

Ah  !  wit  avails  not,  when  the  heart's  like  to  break  ; 

Great  griefs  are  tongue-tied,  when  the  lesser  speak. 

Away,  loose-reined  careers  of  poetry  ; 

The  celebrated  Sisters  may  be  gone  ; 

We  need  no  mourning  women's  elegy, 

No  forced,  affected,  artificial  tone  ; 
Great  and  good  Shepard's  dead  !  Ah  !  this  alone 
Will  set  our  eyes  abroach,  dissolve  a  stone. 

Poetic  raptures  are  of  no  esteem  ; 
Daring  hyperboles  have  here  no  place  ; 
VOL.  ii.— 7 


1 8  HISTORY  OF  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

Luxuriant  wits  on  such  a  copious  theme 
Would  shame  themselves,  and  blush  to  show  their  face. 
Here's  worth  enough  to  overmatch  the  skill 
Of  the  most  stately  Poet  Laureate's  quill. 

As  when  some  formidable  comets  blaze, 
As  when  portentous  prodigies  appear, 
Poor  mortals  with  amazement  stand  and  gaze, 
With  hearts  affrighted  and  with  trembling  fear ; 
So  are  we  all  amaz'e'd  at  this  blow, 
Sadly  portending  some  approaching  woe. 

Art,  nature,  grace,  in  him  were  all  combined, 
To  show  the  world  a  matchless  paragon ; 
In  whom,  of  radiant  virtues  no  less  shined 
Than  a  whole  constellation  ;  but  he's  gone  ! 
He's  gone,  alas  !     Down  in  the  dust  must  lie 
As  much  of  this  rare  person  as  could  die. 

If  to  have  solid  judgment,  pregnant  parts, 

A  piercing  wit,  and  comprehensive  brain  ; 

If  to  have  gone  the  round  of  all  the  arts, 

Immunity  from  death  could  gain  ; 
Shepard  would  have  been  death -proof,  and  secure 
From  that  all-conquering  hand,  I'm  very  sure. 

If  holy  life,  and  deeds  of  charity, 

If  grace  illustrious,  and  virtue  tried, 

If  modest  carriage,  rare  humility, 

Could  have  bribed  Death,  good  Shepard  had  not  died. 
Oh  !  but  inexorable  Death  attacks 
The  best  men,  and  promiscuous  havoc  makes. 

Farewell,  dear  Shepard  !     Thou  art  gone  before, 
Made  free  of  heaven,  where  thou  shall  sing  loud  hymns 
Of  high,  triumphant  praises  evermore, 
In  the  sweet  choir  of  saints  and  seraphims. 

My  dearest,  inmost,  bosom-friend  is  gone  ! 
Gone  is  my  sweet  companion,  soul's  delight ! 
Now  in  an  huddling  crowd  I'm  all  alone, 
And  almost  could  bid  all  the  world — Good-night. 


PETER  FOLCER.  jg 

IV. 

Thus,  we  gather  some  notion  of  the  sort  of  literary  ac- 
complishments that  were  imparted  to  the  earliest  men 
reared  in  the  American  forests ;  the  first  growths  of  the 
highest  culture  to  be  had  here  in  the  days  of  the  pioneers. 
Let  us  listen,  now,  to  a  man  who  stood  for  the  lower  forms 
of  culture  in  New  England  in  those  days,  its  virile  intelli- 
gence, its  free-mindedness,  the  breadth  of  its  manhood. 

In  the  spring  of  1676,  while  New  England  was  absorbed 
in  the  fright  and  wrath  of  its  great  conflict  with  the  In- 
dians, there  came  out  from  the  heart  of  the  sea-mists 
hanging  over  the  island  of  Nantucket,  a  clear  strong  voice, 
speaking  against  the  one  enormous  sin  of  New  England, 
for  which,  as  the  speaker  thought,  Providence  was  once 
more  smiting  the  land  with  peril  and  pain.  Peter  Folger, 
an  able  and  godly  man,  surveyor,  school-master,  and  lay- 
assistant  to  Thomas  Mayhew  in  missionary  work  among 
the  Indians  upon  that  island,  felt  it  in  him,  in  that  hour  of 
stress,  to  bear  some  rhymed  testimony  to  a  great  principle, 
which  then  had  much  need  of  being  uttered  both  in  prose 
and  rhyme  —  the  principle  of  religious  toleration.  It 
seemed  to  him  to  be  plain  enough,  that  King  Philip  and 
his  lusty  scalp-fumblers  were  but  so  many  cords  braided 
into  that  knotted  lash  with  which  the  Almighty  was  then 
scourging  dreadfully,  even  unto  the  bone,  the  Christians 
of  New  England,  for  their  behavior  toward  Christian 
brethren  who  differed  from  them  in  opinion,  to  wit,  Bap- 
tists, Quakers,  and  other  lovers  and  users  of  free  speech. 
Peter  Folger's  testimony  upon  this  occasion  streamed  forth 
in  one  long  jet  of  manly,  ungrammatical,  valiant  doggerel, 
— a  ballad,  just  fit  to  be  sung  by  "  some  blind  crowder, 
with  no  rougher  voice  than  rude  style," — called  "  A  Look- 
ing-Glass  for  the  Times ;  or,  The  former  spirit  of  New  Eng- 
land revived  in  this  generation."1  He  asks  what  the  sin 

1  No  printed  copy  earlier  than  that  of  1763  is  now  known  to  exist.     I  use 
the  copy  given  in  Duyckinck,  I.  58-61. 


20  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LJTERA  TURE. 

is,   for  which  God  is   angry  against  them.     This  is  his 
answer : 

"  Sure,  'tis  not  chiefly  for  those  sins 

That  magistrates  do  name, 
And  make  good  laws  for  to  suppress 

And  execute  the  same. 
But  'tis  for  that  same  crying  sin 

That  rulers  will  not  own, 
And  that  whereby  much  cruelty 
To  brethren  hath  been  shown. 
The  sin  of  persecution 

Such  laws  established  ; 
By  which  laws  they  have  gone  so  far 
As  blood  hath  touched  blood." 

This  ballad,  though  without  one  sparkle  of  poetry,  is 
great  in  frankness  and  force ;  and  as  the  author  of  it  had 
seen  fit  to  arraign  and  censure  the  mightiest  personages  in 
the  land — magistrates  and  ministers — he  nobly  declined 
all  shirking  of  responsibility  in  the  affair,  but  just  wove  his 
name  and  his  place  of  abode  into  the  tissue  of  his  verse, 
thereby  notifying  all  who  might  have  any  issues  to  try 
with  him,  precisely  who  he  was  and  where  he  was  to  be 
found,  in  case  of  need  : 

"  I  am  for  peace,  and  not  for  war, 

And  that's  the  reason  why, 
I  write  more  plain  than  some  men  do, 

That  use  to  daub  and  lie. 
But  I  shall  cease,  and  set  my  name 

To  what  I  here  insert ; 
Because,  to  be  a  libeller, 

I  hate  it  with  my  heart. 
From  Sherbon  town,  where  now  I  dwell, 

My  name  I  do  put  here  ; 
Without  offence,  your  real  friend, 

It  is  Peter  Folger." 

This  strong-brained  and  free-hearted  old  surveyor  of 
Nantucket  was  blessed  with  sons  and  daughters  nine ;  and 
the  youngest  of  his  daughters  became  the  mother  of  Ben- 


BENJAMIN   TOMPSON.  21 

jamin  Franklin.  The  grandson,  when  he  undertook  to 
write  his  autobiography,  did  not  ignore  the  honorable 
memory  of  his  ancestor;  by  a  few  quiet  strokes  of  de- 
scription he  has  secured  him  against  being  ever  forgotten. 
At  the  very  time  when  Peter  Folger,  in  his  sea-girdled 
solitude,  was  preaching  from  the  terrible  text  of  the  In- 
dian conflict  his  blunt  sermon  for  toleration,  there  lived, 
probably  at  Charlestown,~a  school-master  named  Benjamin 
Tompson,  born  at  Braintree  in  1640,  graduated  at  Har- 
vard in  1662,  who  was  pondering  the  same  text,  and  who 
wrought  from  it  a  sermon  in  smoother  verse,  called  "  New 
England's  Crisis." l  This  poet's  best  vein  is  satiric, — his 
favorite  organ  being  the  rhymed  pentameter  couplet,  with  a 
flow,  a  vigor,  and  an  edge  obviously  caught  from  the  con- 
temporaneous verse  of  John  Dryden.  He  has  the  parti- 
sanship, the  exaggeration,  the  choleric  injustice,  that  are 
common  in  satire ;  and  like  other  satirists,  failing  to  note 
the  moral  perspectives  of  history,  he  utters  over  again  the 
stale  and  easy  lie,  wherein  the  past  is  held  up  as  wiser  and 
holier  than  the  present.  Though  New  England  has  had 
a  life  but  little  more  than  fifty  years  long,  the  poet  sees 
within  it  the  tokens  of  a  hurrying  degeneracy,  in  customs, 
in  morals,  in  valor,  in  piety.  He  turns  back,  with  rev- 
erent and  eyeless  homage,  to  the  good  old  times  of  the 
Founders,  when  the  people  dwelt 

"  Under  thatch'd  huts,  without  the  cry  of  rent, 
And  the  best  sauce  to  every  dish — content;" 
when 

"  Deep-skirted  doublets.  Puritanic  capes. 
Which  now  would  render  men  like  upright  apes, 

1  The  only  copy  of  the  poem  under  this  title,  so  far  as  is  known  to  me,  be- 
«^ngs  to  the  Boston  Athenaeum,  and  is  probably  the  copy  used  before  my  time 
by  Kettell  and  Duyckinck.  When  making  my  studies  on  Tompson,  I  did 
not  know  of  its  existence  there,  and  for  my  citations  from  it  was  obliged  to 
depend  on  the  extracts  given  by  Kettell.  Through  the  diligence  and  acumen 
of  Dr.  Samuel  A.  Green,  "  New  England's  Crisis"  has  been  identified  as  a 
different  edition  of  the  poem  called  "  New  England's  Tears  for  her  Present 
Miseries,"— a  unique  copy  of  the  latter  being  among  the  treasures  of  the 
library  of  Mr.  John  Nicholas  Brown.  Other  verses  by  Tompson  have  also 
been  brought  to  light  by  Dr.  Green,  as  may  be  noted  in  a  Mass.  Hist.  Soc. 
Proc.,  V.  2-3  ;  VIII.  387-3^:  X.  263-284  ;  369-371- 


22  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  l^URE. 

Was  comelier  wear,  our  wiser  fathers  thought, 
Than  the  cast  fashions  from  all  Europe  brought ; M 

when,  at  table, 

"  an  honest  grace  would  hold 
Till  an  hot  pudding  grew  at  heart  a  cold; 
And  men  had  better  stomachs  at  religion, 
Than  I  to  capon,  turkey-cock,  or  pigeon; 
When  honest  sisters  met  to  pray,  not  prate, 
About  their  own,  and  not  their  neighbors'  state;  " 

when  Indian  impertinence  was  not  tolerated  for  an  in- 
stant,  and 

"  No  sooner  pagan  malice  peeped  forth, 
But  valor  snibbed  it.     Then  were  men  of  worth, 
Who  by  their  prayers  slew  thousands  ;  angel-like, 
Their  weapons  are  unseen,  with  which  they  strike." 

Alas,  those  flawless  times — that  never  were — those 

"  golden  times,  too  fortunate  to  hold, 
Were  quickly  sinned  away  for  love  of  gold  ;  " 

and  in  retribution,  God  is  sending  upon  New  England  the 
wrath  and  anguish  of  the  Indian  wars : 

"  Not  ink,  but  blood  and  tears  now  serve  the  turn, 
To  draw  the  figure  of  New  England's  urn." 

Other  and  slighter  poetic  work  of  Benjamin  Tompson's 
is  to  be  met  with,  safely  lodged  in  the  pages  of  some  of 
his  contemporaries.  Among  the  complimentary  verses 
prefixed  to  the  "  Magnalia,"  *  are  two  little  poems  by  him, 
one  in  Latin,  one  in  English  ;  and  in  the  text  of  that 
work,  he  has  a  rhymed  eulogy  "  upon  the  Very  Reverend 
Samuel  Whiting."2  Moreover,  in  William  Hubbard's 
"  Indian  Wars,"  is  a  prefatory  poem,  signed  "  B.  T.,"  that 
is  undoubtedly  Tompson's,  and  that  has  some  sprightly 

1  Vol.  I.  20.  *  Ibid.  510-511. 


MICHAEL    WIGGLESWORTH.  23 

and  characteristic  lines,— as  these,  addressed  to  the  his- 
torian : 

"  I  took  your  muse  for  old  Columbus'  ghost, 
Who  scraped  acquaintance  with  this  Western  Coast"1 


V. 

In  contemporaneous  renown,  far  above  all  other  verse- 
writers  of  the  colonial  time,  was  Michael  Wigglesworth, 
the  explicit  and  unshrinking  rhymer  of  the  Five  Points  of 
Calvinism  ;  a  poet  who  so  perfectly  uttered  in  verse  the 
religious  faith  and  emotion  of  Puritan  New  England  that, 
for  more  than  a  hundred  years,  his  writings  had  universal 
diffusion  there,  and  a  popular  influence  only  inferior  to 
that  of  the  Bible  and  the  Shorter  Catechism. 

No  one  holding  a  different  theology  from  that  held  by 
Michael  Wigglesworth,  can  do  justice  to  him  as  a  poet,  with- 
out exercising  the  utmost  intellectual  catholicity ;  other- 
wise, disgust  and  detestation  for  much  of  this  poet's  mes- 
sage, will  drown  all  sense  of  the  picturesqueness,  the  im- 
aginative vigor,  the  tremendous  realism,  of  many  of  the 
conceptions  under  which  his  message  was  delivered.  It  is 
necessary,  likewise,  if  we  would  not  fail  in  true  insight  as 
we  study  him,  to  distinguish  between  the  essence  of  poetry 
and  its  form.  There  was  in  him  the  genius  of  a  true  poet ; 
his  imagination  had  an  epic  strength, — it  was  courageous, 
piercing,  creative ;  his  pages  are  strewn  with  many  un- 
wrought  ingots  of  poetry.  Yet,  he  had  given  up  to  a  nar- 
row and  a  ferocious  creed  what  was  meant  for  mankind  ;  in 
his  intense  pursuit  of  what  he  believed  to  be  the  good  and 
the  true,  he  forgot  the  very  existence  of  the  beautiful ; 
finally,  not  having  served  his  poetic  apprenticeship  under 
any  of  the  sane  and  mighty  masters  of  English  song,  he 
was  himself  forever  incapable  of  giving  utterance  to  his 
genius— except  in  a  dialect  that  was  unworthy  of  it. 

1  W.  Hubbard,  "  Indian  Wars,"  I.  34,  S.    G.  Drake's  ed. 


24  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

His  verse  is  quite  lacking  in  art ;  its  ordinary  form  being 
a  crude,  swinging  ballad-measure,  with  a  sort  of  cheap  mel- 
ody, a  shrill,  reverberating  clatter,  that  would  instantly 
catch  and  please  the  popular  ear,  at  that  time  deaf  to 
daintier  and  more  subtile  effects  in  poetry.  He  was,  him- 
self, in  nearly  all  respects,  the  embodiment  of  what  was 
great,  earnest,  and  sad,  in  colonial  New  England  ;  even  in 
his  limitations,  he  was  true  to  it,  and  was  the  better  quali- 
fied to  be  its  poetic  voice.  In  spite,  however,  of  all  offences, 
of  all  defects,  there  are  in  his  poetry  an  irresistible  sincer- 
ity, a  reality,  a  vividness,  reminding  one  of  similar  qualities 
in  the  prose  of  John  Bunyan  ;  and  had  these  forces  in  our 
poet  gained  for  themselves  a  nobler  literary  expression,  they 
would  have  gained  for  him  a  high  and  permanent  fame. 

Coming  to  this  country  in  1638,  a  child  of  seven  years, 
he  grew  up  in  his  father's  household  at  New  Haven  ;  in 
1651,  he  was  graduated  at  Harvard  College,  and  served 
for  a  time  as  tutor  there ;  in  1656,  he  was  made  pastor  of 
the  church  at  Maiden,  Massachusetts ;  and  there  he  re- 
mained, as  pastor  and  physician,  until  his  death  in  1705. 
In  body  he  was  slight  and  delicate — "  a  feeble,  little  shadow 
of  a  man  ; "*  all  his  life  he  had  sorrow  and  pain  ;  yet  there 
was  in  him  an  intensity  of  spirit  that  triumphed  over  all 
physical  ills,  and  a  tenderness  of  sympathy  that  made  him, 
after  the  somewhat  dreary  manner  of  those  days,  "  a  man 
of  the  beatitudes,"  *  and  a  comforter  to  all  who,  like  him- 
self, knew  the  touch  of  grief. 

As  a  poet,  Michael  Wigglesworth  stands  for  New  Eng- 
land Puritanism  confronting  with  steady  gaze  the  sublime 
and  hideous  dogmas  of  its  creed,  and  trying  to  use  those 
dogmas  for  the  admonition  and  the  consolation  of  man- 
kind by  putting  them  into  song.  A  sensitive,  firm,  wide- 
ranging,  unresting  spirit,  he  looks  out  mournfully  over  the 


1  Cotton  Mather,  in  Funeral  Sermon,  26. 

9  The  Rev.  A.   P.  Peabody's  description  of  him,  cited   in  J.  W.   Dean, 
"  Sketch  of  the  Life  of  Michael  Wigglesworth,"  10. 


MICHAEL    WIGGLESWORTH.  2$ 

throngs  of  men  that  fill  the  world,— all  of  them  totally 
depraved,  all  of  them  caught,  from  farthest  eternity,  in  the 
adamantine  meshes  of  God's  decrees  ;  the  most  of  them, 
also,  being  doomed  in  advance,  by  those  decrees,  to  an 
endless  existence  of  ineffable  torment, — and  upon  this 
situation  of  affairs,  the  excellent  Michael  Wigglesworth 
proposes  to  make  poetry.  Such  as  it  is,  it  is  absolutely 
sincere,  grim,  pathetic,  horrible.  He  chants,  with  utter 
frankness,  the  chant  of  Christian  fatalism,  the  moan  of 
earthly  vanity  and  sorrow,  the  physical  bliss  of  the  saved, 
the  physical  tortures  of  the  damned.^/ 

In  the  multitude  of  his  verses,  Michael  Wigglesworth 
surpasses  all  other  poets  of  the  colonial  time,  excepting 
Anne  Bradstreet.  Besides  numerous  minor  poems,  he  is 
the  author  of  three  poetical  works  of  considerable  length. 

One  of  these,  "God's  Controversy  with  New  England," 
was  "  written  in  the  time  of  the  great  drought,"  1662, — a 
calamity  of  which  the  author  takes  advantage  for  the  pur- 
pose, as  he  tells  the  reader,  of 

"  pointing  at  those  faults  of  thine 
Which  are  notorious."1 

The  argument  of  the  poem  is  this :  "  New  England 
planted,  prospered,  declining,  threatened,  punished."  The 
poet  holds  the  opinion,  common  enough  in  his  day,  that 
before  the  arrival  of  the  English  in  America,  this  conti- 
nent had  been  the  choice  and  peculiar  residence  of  the 
Devil  and  his  angels : 

"A  waste  and  howling  wilderness, 

Where  none  inhabited, 
But  hellish  fiends,  and  brutish  men, 
That  devils  worshipped. 

This  region  was  in  darkness  placed, 

Far  off  from  heaven's  light, 
Amidst  the  shadows  of  grim  death 

And  of  eternal  night." 

1  This  poem  was  first  printed  in  Mass.  Hist.  Soc.  Proc.  for  1871-1873,  83-93  \ 
from  which  I  make  my  quotations. 


26  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TUXE. 

At  last,  in  this  doleful  realm,  arrive  the  Lord's  forces  from 
England : 

"  The  dark  and  dismal  western  woods, 

The  Devil's  den  whilere, 
Beheld  such  glorious  gospel-shine, 
As  none  beheld  more  clear." 

The  poet  then  pictures  the  entrance  of  the  English  into 
America,  in  language  similar  to  that  used  in  Scripture  to 
describe  the  entrance  of  the  Jews  into  Canaan;  he  chroni- 
cles the  zeal  of  the  first  generation,  next  its  decay ;  after 
which,  as  he  informs  us, 

"  The  air  became  tempestuous  ; 
The  wilderness  gan  quake  ; 
And  from  above,  with  awful  voice, 
The  Almighty,  thundering,  spake." 

What  the  Almighty  then  spake,  is  faithfully  reported  by 
the  poet, — a  quaintly  eloquent  and  very  Puritanic  address 
to  the  people  of  New  England,  closing  with  a  dire  menace 
of  immediate  retribution  : 

"  Thus  ceased  his  dreadful,  threatening  voice, 

The  high  and  lofty  One. 
The  heavens  stood  still,  appalled  thereat ; 
The  earth  beneath  did  groan. 

Soon  after  I  beheld  and  saw 

A  mortal  dart  come  flying  ; 
I  looked  again,  and  quickly  saw 

Some  fainting,  others  dying;" 

and  the  poet  goes  on  to  give,  with  the  exactness  of  a 
medical  man  in  full  practice,  a  catalogue  of  the  various 
diseases  then  most  prevalent  in  his  neighborhood ;  he  also 
draws  a  picture  of  the  barrenness  of  the  fields  in  conse- 
quence of  the  long  drought ;  and  he  concludes  with  a  pa- 
thetic appeal  to  the  "  many  praying  saints  "  still  left  in 
New  England. 


MICHAEL    WIGGLESWORTH.  27 

Another  large  poem  of  Wigglesworth's  is  "  Meat  out  of 
the  Eater ;  or,  Meditations  concerning  the  necessity,  end, 
and  usefulness  of  afflictions  unto  God's  children,  all  tend- 
ing to  prepare  them  for  and  comfort  them  under  the 
Cross."  Here  we  have  simply  the  Christian  doctrine  of 
comfort  in  sorrow,  translated  into  metrical  jingles.  With 
nearly  all  sensitiveness  to  literary  form  torpid  in  New 
England,  and  with  devout  feeling  warm  and  alert,  it  is  not 
strange  that  this  clumsy  but  sympathetic  poem  should 
have  found  there  a  multitude  of  admirers.  It  was  first 
published,  probably,  in  1669;  ten  years  afterward,  it  had 
passed  through  at  least  four  editions ;  and  during  the  en- 
tire colonial  age,  it  was  a  much-read  manual  of  solace  in 
affliction.  And,  indeed,  it  is  such  poetry  as  might  still 
serve  that  purpose,  at  least  by  plucking  from  the  memory, 
for  a  moment,  a  rooted  sorrow,  and  substituting  a  literary 
anguish  in  place  of  it. 

But  the  master-piece  of  Michael  Wigglesworth's  genius, 
and  his  most  delectable  gift  to  an  admiring  public,  was 
that  blazing  and  sulphurous  poem,  "  The  Day  of  Doom ; 
or,  A  poetical  description  of  the  great  and  last  Judg- 
ment." In  summoning  to  himself  the  inspiration  neces- 
sary for  the  composition  of  the  work,  the  poet  flouts  at  all 
pagan  help,  and  utters  "a  prayer  unto  Christ  the  Judge 
of  the  world  " : 

"  Thee,  thee  alone,  I'll  invocate ; 
For  I  do  much  abominate 
To  call  the  Muses  to  mine  aid. 


Oh  !  what  a  deal  of  blasphemy, 
And  heathenish  impiety, 
In  Christian  poets  may  be  found, 
Where  heathen  gods  with  praise  are  crowned! 
They  make  Jehovah  to  stand  by, 
Till  Juno,  Venus,  Mercury, 
With  frowning  Mars,  and  thund'ring  Jove, 
Rule  earth  below,  and  heaven  above. 
21 


28  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

But  I  have  learned  to  pray  to  none, 
Save  unto  God  in  Christ  alone  ; 
Nor  will  I  laud,  no,  not  in  jest, 
That  which  I  know  God  doth  detest. 
I  reckon  it  a  damning  evil, 
To  give  God's  praises  to  the  Devil. 
Thou,  Christ,  art  he  to  whom  I  pray; 
Thy  glory  fain  I  would  display. 
Oh  !  guide  me  by  thy  sacred  Sprite, 
So  to  indite,  and  so  to  write, 
That  I  thine  holy  name  may  praise, 
And  teach  the  sons  of  men  thy  ways." 

The  opening  stanzas  of  the  poem  give  a  rather  brisk 
picture  of  the  heedlessness  and  sensual  ease  of  the  world, 
just  before  the  Judgment : 

"  Still  was  the  night,  serene  and  bright, 

When  all  men  sleeping  lay  ; 
Calm  was  the  season,  and  carnal  reason 
Thought  so  'twould  last  for  aye. " 

Upon  this  scene  of  carnal  security,  suddenly  bursts  the 
world's  doom  : 

"  For  at  midnight  breaks  forth  a  light, 

Which  turns  the  night  to  day, 
And  speedily  an  hideous  cry 
Doth  all  the  world  dismay.'" 

At  this  dreadful  noise,  all  sleeping  sinners  are  abruptly 
wakened : 

"  They  rush  from  beds  with  giddy  heads, 

And  to  their  windows  run, 
Viewing  this  light,  which  shines  more  bright 
Than  doth  the  noonday  sun.'' 

At  once,  in  appalling  state,  appears  Christ,  the  Judges 

"  Before  his  face  the  heavens  give  place, 

And  skies  are  rent  asunder, 
With  mighty  voice  and  hideous  noise, 
More  terrible  than  thunder. 


MICHAEL    WIGGLESWORTH.  29 

No  heart  so  bold  but  now  grows  cold 

And  almost  dead  with  fear  ; 
No  eye  so  dry  but  now  can  cry, 

And  pour  out  many  a  tear. 
Earth's  potentates  and  powerful  states, 

Captains  and  men  of  might, 
Are  quite  abashed,  their  courage  dashed, 

At  this  most  dreadful  sight. 

All  kindreds  wail,  all  hearts  do  fail; 

Horror  the  world  doth  fill 
With  weeping  eyes  and  loud  outcries. — 

Yet  knows  not  how  to  kilL 

Some  hide  themselves  in  caves  and  delves, 

In  places  under  ground ; 
Some  rashly  leap  into  the  deep 

To  scape  by  being  drowned  ; 
Some  to  the  rocks— O  senseless  blocks  I — 

And  woody  mountains  run, 
That  there  they  might  this  fearful  sight 

And  dreaded  Presence  shun. 

The  mountains  smoke,  the  hills  are  shook, 

The  earth  is  rent  and  torn, 
As  if  she  should  be  clear  dissolved, 

Or  from  her  centre  borne. 
The  sea  doth  roar,  forsakes  the  shore, 

And  shrinks  away  for  fear  ; 
The  wild  beasts  flee  into  the  sea, 

So  soon  as  he  draws  near." 

After  this,  the  trump  is  sounded ;  at  which,  the  dead 
rise  from  their  graves,  the  living  are  "  changed,"  and  all 
are  brought  before  the  vast  tribunal : 

"  His  winged  hosts  fly  through  all  coasts, 

Together  gathering 
Both  good  and  bad,  both  quick  and  dead, 

And  all  to  judgment  bring. 
Out  of  their  holes,  those  creeping  moles 

That  hid  themselves  for  fear, 
By  force  they  take,  and  quickly  make 

Before  the  judge  appear." 


•^0  HIS  TOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITER  A  TURE. 

Immediately,  the  sheep  are  parted  from  the  goats ;  the 
former  are  briefly  described  ;  then  the  latter,  as  follows : 

"  At  Christ's  left  hand,  the  goats  do  stand  : 

All  whining  hypocrites, 
Who  lor  self-ends  did  seem  Christ's  friends, 
But  fostered  guileful  sprites  ; 

Apostates  base,  and  run-aways, 

Such  as  have  Christ  forsaken, 
Of  whom  the  Devil,  with  seven  more  evil, 

Hath  fresh  possession  taken  ; 


Blasphemers  lewd,  and  swearers  shrewd, 

Scoffers  at  purity, 
That  hated  God,  contemned  his  rod, 

And  loved  security  ; 
Sabbath-polluters,  saints-persecutors, 

Presumptuous  men,  and  proud, 
Who  never  loved  those  that  reproved; 

All  stand  among  this  crowd. 

False-witness  bearers,  and  self-forswearers, 

Murderers,  and  men  of  blood, 
Witches,  enchanters,  and  ale-house  haunters. 

Beyond  account  there  stood. 

There  stand  all  nations  and  generations 

Of  Adam's  progeny, 
Whom  Christ  redeemed  not,  whom  he  esteemed  not, 

Through  infidelity. 

These  numerous  bands,  wringing  their  hands, 

And  weeping  all  stand  there, 
Filled  with  anguish,  whose  hearts  do  languish, 

Through  self-tormenting  fear. 
Fast  by  them  stand,  at  Christ's  left  hand, 

The  lion  fierce  and  fell, 
The  dragon  bold,  that  serpent  old, 

That  hurried  souls  to  hell. 


MICHAEL    WIGGLESWORTH.  3i 

There  also  stand,  under  command, 

Legions  of  sprites  unclean, 
And  hellish  fiends,  that  are  no  friends 

To  God,  nor  unto  men. 

With  dismal  chains,  and  strongest  reins, 

Like  prisoners  of  hell, 
They're  held  in  place  before  Christ's  face, 

Till  he  their  doom  shall  tell. 
These  void  of  tears,  but  filled  with  fears, 

And  dreadful  expectation 
Of  endless  pains  and  scalding  flames, 

Stand  waiting  for  damnation." 

Then  proceeds  the  business  of  the  court.  The  saints  are 
first  attended  to:  they  draw  near,  and  receive  their  benign 
award,  and  are  at  once  comfortably  placed  on  thrones  to 
join  with  Christ  in  judging  the  wicked.  Then,  of  course, 
the  wicked  have  their  turn  ;  and  in  reply  to  the  indict- 
ment against  them  all,  different  classes  of  them  put  in 
their  defences,  and  "  the  judge  uncaseth  them."  Thus, 
in  order,  are  considered  "  hypocrites,"  "  civil  honest  men," 
14  those  that  pretend  want  of  opportunity  to  repent,"  those 
who  "  plead  examples  of  their  betters,"  "  heathen  men," 
and  others,  until,  at  last,  "  reprobate  infants"  are  reached  : 

"  Then  to  the  bar,  all  they  drew  near 

Who  died  in  infancy, 
And  never  had.  or  good  or  bad. 

Effected  personally, 
But  from  the  womb  unto  the  tomb 

Were  straightway  carried, 
Or,  at  the  least,  ere  they  transgressed, — 

Who  thus  began  to  plead." 

These  poor  little  babes,  breaking  from  the  muteness  of 
their  terror  over  all  these  horrid  proceedings,  argue,  with 
a  truly  precocious  logical  acumen,  against  the  injustice  of 
their  being  cast  into  hell  forever  and  ever,  on  account  of 
a  sin  committed  by  Adam, — particularly  as  Adam  himself 
was  even  then  seated  in  quiet  bliss  in  one  of  the  most 


32  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

agreeable  and  conspicuous  of  those  thrones  among  the 
saints.  With  these  infantile  pleadings,  however,  the  poet  is 
in  no  respect  embarrassed ;  and  in  his  poem  he  has  "  their 
arguments  taken  off  "  with  great  promptness  and  severity — 
a  severity  mitigated,  indeed,  by  one  indulgent  concession. 
The  judge  says  to  these  infants,  in  conclusion  : 

"  You  sinners  are;  and  such  a  share 

As  sinners,  may  expect ; 
Such  you  shall  have,  for  I  do  save 

None  but  mine  own  elect. 
Yet  to  compare  your  sin  with  their 

Who  lived  a  longer  time, 
I  do  confess  yours  is  much  less, 

Though  every  sin's  a  crime. 

A  crime  it  is  ;  therefore  in  bliss 

You  may  not  hope  to  dwell ; 
But  unto  you  I  shall  allow 

The  easiest  room  in  hell." 

Thus  the  last  word  of  argument  is  spoken ;  Christ  begins 
"  To  fire  the  earth's  foundation  ;  " 

and  to  this  enormous  conflagration  are  the  shrieking  vic- 
tims of  God's  omnipotent  fury  then  formally  doomed  : 

"  Ye  sinful  wights  and  cursed  sprites, 

That  work  iniquity, 
Depart  together,  from  me  forever, 

To  endless  misery  ; 
Your  portion  take  in  yonder  lake 

Where  fire  and  brimstone  flameth ; 
Suffer  the  smart  which  your  desert 

As  its  due  wages  claimeth. 

Then  might  you  hear  them  rend  and  te«r 

The  air  with  their  outcries  ; 
The  hideous  noise  of  their  sad  voice 

Ascendeth  to  the  skies. 
They  wring  their  hands,  their  caitiff-hands, 

And  gnash  their  teeth  for  terror  ; 
They  cry,  they  roar,  for  anguish  sore, 

And  gnaw  their  tongues  for  horror. 


MICHAEL    WIGGLESWORTH. 

But  get  away  without  delay  ; 

Christ  pities  not  your  cry ; 
Depart  to  hell,  there  may  you  yell 

And  roar  eternally. 

As  chaff  that's  dry,  as  dust  doth  fly 

Before  the  northern  wind, 
Right  so  are  they  chased  away 

And  can  no  refuge  find. 
They  hasten  to  the  pit  of  woe 

Guarded  by  angels  stout, 
Who  to  fulfil  Christ's  holy  will 

Attend  this  wicked  rout ; 

Whom  having  brought,  as  they  are  taught. 

Unto  the  brink  of  hell  ; 
(That  dismal  place,  far  from  Christ's  face, 

Where  Death  and  Darkness  dwell, 
Where  God's  fierce  ire  kindleth  the  fire 

And  vengeance  feeds  the  flame, 
With  piles  of  wood  and  brimstone  flood, 

So  none  can  quench  the  same;) 

With  iron  bands  they  bind  their  hands 

And  cursed  feet  together  ; 
And  cast  them  all,  both  great  and  small, 

Into  that  lake  forever  ; 
Where  day  and  night,  without  respite, 

They  wail  and  cry  and  howl, 
For  torturing  pain  which  they  sustain, 

In  body  and  in  soul. 

For  day  and  night,  in  their  despite, 

Their  torment's  smoke  ascendeth  ; 
Their  pain  and  grief  have  no  relief, 

Their  anguish  never  endeth. 
There  must  they  lie  and  never  die, 

Though  dying  every  day  ; 
There  must  they,  dying,  ever  lie. 

And  not  consume  away. 

Die  fain  they  would,  if  die  they  could, 

But  death  will  not  be  had ; 
God's  direful  wrath  their  bodies  hath 

Forever  immortal  made. 
VOL.  H.— 3 


24  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

They  live  to  lie  in  misery 

And  bear  eternal  woe  ; 
And  live  they  must  whilst  God  is  just, 

That  he  may  plague  them  so." 

The  last  strains  of  the  poem  are  singularly  appropriate ; 
they  celebrate  the  felicity  of  the  saints,  "  who  rejoice  to 
see  judgment  executed  upon  the  wicked  world." 

This  great  poem,  which,  with  entire  unconsciousness, 
attributes  to  the  Divine  Being  a  character  the  most  exe- 
crable and  loathsome  to  be  met  with,  perhaps,  in  any  liter- 
ature, Christian  or  pagan,  had  for  a  hundred  years  a  popu- 
larity far  exceeding  that  of  any  other  work,  in  prose  or 
verse,  produced  in  America  before  the  Revolution.  The 
eighteen  hundred  copies  of  the  first  edition  were  sold 
within  a  single  year  ;  which  implies  the  purchase  of  a  copy 
of  "  The  Day  of  Doom  "  by  at  least  every  thirty-fifth  per- 
son then  in  New  England, — an  example  of  the  commercial 
success  of  a  book  never  afterward  equalled  in  this  country. 
Since  that  time,  the  book  has  been  repeatedly  published  ; 
at  least  once  in  England,  and  at  least  eight  times  in 
America — the  last  time  being  in  I867.1 

Happily,  this  frightful  and  blasphemous  delineation  of 
the  government  exercised  over  us  by  the  Good  God,  has 
at  last,  in  civilized  society,  lost  its  cruel  power  over  the 
human  mind,  and  may  now  be  read  merely  as  a  curious 
literary  phenomenon, — as  a  dreadful  example,  indeed,  of 
the  distressing  illusions  once  inflicted  upon  themselves,  in 
the  name  of  religion,  by  the  best  of  men.  But  no  narra- 
tive of  our  intellectual  history  during  the  colonial  days, 
can  justly  fail  to  record  the  enormous  influence  of  this 
terrible  poem  during  all  those  times.  Not  only  was  it 
largely  circulated  in  the  form  of  a  book,  but  it  was  hawked 
about  the  country,  in  broadsides,  as  a  popular  ballad  ;  it 
"was  the  solace,"  as  Lowell  playfully  says,  "of  every  fire- 
side, the  flicker  of  the  pine-knots  by  which  it  was  conned 

1  This  is  the  ed.  from  which  I  have  drawn  the  foregoing  extracts. 


SAMUEL    WIGGLESWORTH.  35 

perhaps  adding  a  livelier  relish  to  its  premonitions  of  eternal 
combustion  ;  " '  its  pages  were  assigned  in  course  to  little 
children,  to  be  learned  by  heart,  along  with  the  catechism  ; 
as  late  as  the  present  century,  there  were  in  New  England 
many  aged  persons  who  were  able  to  repeat  the  whole 
poem  ;  for  more  than  a  hundred  years  after  its  first  pub- 
lication, it  was,  beyond  question,  the  one  supreme  poem 
of  Puritan  New  England;  and  Cotton  Mather  predicted 
that  it  would  continue  to  be  read  in  New  England  until 
the  day  of  doom  itself  should  arrive. 

Among  the  sons  of  Michael  Wigglesworth,  was  one, 
Samuel,  who  in  early  life  gave  brilliant  proof  of  having 
high  poetic  genius.  In  1707,  when  he  was  eighteen  years 
of  age,  he  was  graduated  at  Harvard  ;  then,  for  two  years, 
he  remained  near  the  college,  pursuing  further  studies ; 
then,  after  an  experience  of  fluctuation  between  the  claims 
of  medicine,  pedagogy,  and  divinity,  he  gave  himself  to  the 
latter  profession,  and  in  its  pursuit  passed  the  remainder 
of  his  long  life,  dying  in  1768.  It  was  in  1709,  while  he 
was  but  a  youth  of  twenty  and  near  the  end  of  his  post- 
graduate studies  at  college,  that  he  wrote  a  few  verses 
which,  alone,  are  sufficient  to  show  him  to  have  had  a  true 
and  fine  endowment  for  poetry.  These  verses  are  entitled 
"AJ'uneral  Song."  They  were  written  in  commemora- 
tion of  a  gifted  young  man,  Nathaniel  Clarke,  who,  after 
taking  the  Master's  degree  at  Harvard,  had  paid  a  visit  to 
England,  but,  on  the  voyage  homeward,  had  died,  and 
been  buried  in  the  sea.  Here,  indeed,  in  this  song  of 
friendship  and  of  sorrow,  we  trace  once  more  the  touch 
of  a  real  poet.  Even  to  his  eyes,  glad  with  the  gladness 
of  his  youth,  the  once  radiant  world,  now  that  his  friend 

1  "  Harvard  Book,"  II.  158.  The  humor  of  Lowell's  remark  should  not 
give  us  the  impression  that  "  The  Day  of  Doom  "  was  often  perused  with 
any  humorous  feeling,  by  the  first  three  or  four  generations  of  readers, — to 
whom,  indeed,  all  its  fearful  words  seemed  only  the  literal  truth.  Joseph  T. 
Buckingham  mentions  that  even  after  the  Revolution  he  read  it,  as  a  lad, 
with  great  excitement  and  fright  His  "  Personal  Memoirs,"  I.  19. 


36  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITER  A  TURE. 

has  gone  from  it,  wears  a  sorrowful  and  impoverished 
look;  he  grieves,  too,  because  into  the  mysteries  and 
silences  of  death  his  friend  has  been  hurried,  at  a  time 
when  no  pressure  of  the  hand,  no  whisper  of  affection, 
could  tell  him  of  the  love  and  the  grief  of  those  who 
were  left  behind.  Therefore,  the  poet,  unable  to  en- 
dure the  anguish  of  this  thought,  would  pursue  his 
friend,  even  into  the  far  heavens  whither  he  is  gone; 
would  make  outcry  and  inquest  for  him  through  the  re- 
motest spaces  of  the  universe ;  and  convey  to  him,  where- 
soever he  may  be,  the  passionate  message  that  had  been 
unspoken  here : 

"Vain  poet's  license  !  now,  if  thou  canst  soar 
Above  mount  Sinai's  top,  'bove  things  revealed, 
Put  on  the  winged  morn,  and  speed  amain 
Where  increate  eternity's  revealed; 

Fancy  thyself  shot  through  the  ethereal  world, 
Translated  from  thy  clay,  amidst  the  seats 
Of  highest  angels,  mighty  seraphim, 
Of  thrones,  dominions,  princes,  potentates  ; 

Find  there  a  saint  in  milk-white  robes  arrayed, 
Clothed  with  the  sun,  adorned  with  grace  and  love^ 
Who  not  long  since  bade  this  vile  world  adieu, 
To  fill  the  number  of  the  choir  above. 

Tell  him  who  now  is  glorified  above, 
How  rivulets  of  tears  have  drowned  our  eyes; 
Our  hopes  are  all  thrown  overboard  with  him, 
Our  tumid  thoughts  becalmed  in  a  surprise. 

Put  on  thy  graces,  court  the  vestal  soul 
To  a  relapse  of  things  ;  with  all  thy  might 
Sing  an  encomium  of  terrestrial  joys, 
Try  if  thou  canst  recall  her  winged  flight 

At  least  ascend  and  view  the  orbs  above, 

See  where  he  pierced  heaven's  powdered  canopy; 

Perhaps  his  soul  left  her  idea  there, 

Or  stopped  to  hear  the  spheric  harmony. 


SAMUEL    W1GGLESWORTH.  yj 

Behold  the  starry  train— those  rolling  lamps 
That  burn  fierce  anthems  to  the  eternal  light ; 
Number  those  morning  sons,  and  find  him  there ; 
Look,  look,  and  see  him,  with  extreme  delight. 

Warbling  divinest  airs,  and  shouting  forth 

Loud  hallelujahs  to  the  Immortal  King, — 

The  God  whose  breath  first  formed  the  heavenly  ho«ta» 

And  quickening  gave  to  every  living  thing. 

Descend,  my  soul,  to  the  Elysian  bowers, 
The  imaginary  shades,  where  up  and  down 
The  blessed  ghosts  do  rove  and  pass  the  hours. 
In  grateful  pastimes  till  the  eternal  dawn. 

Trace  every  verdant  grove,  each  flowery  bank. 
Whose  wanton  edges  curl  the  silver  streams ; 
Search  every  silent  grot,  each  peaceful  vale, 
Each  circling  walk  in  those  enameled  greens, 

Ask  all  the  rural  powers  and  infant  swains 
That  range  in  those  luxurious  paths  of  bliss, 
Ask  if  or  no  a  comely,  gentle  youth 
Has  flown  of  late  into  their  paradise." 

But,  suddenly,  in  the  midst  of  this  brave  scheme  of  com- 
munication  with  the  dead,  there  falls  upon  the  poet  the 
thought  of  its  impossibility.  Death  outwits  us !  Death 
despoils  us  and  there  is  no  remedy  1  Death,  "  an  angry 
foe,"  "  a  lawless,  tearless  enemy," 

"Murders  us  with  an  unrelenting  hand. 
And  reaps  impartial  both  the  green  and  dry. 

He  shrinks  not  at  the  manly  grace : 
See,  here  he  rudely  takes  their  breath  : 
See,  see,  the  valiant  soul  gives  place 
Unto  all-conquering  Time  and  Death." 

Then,  the  fierceness  of  this  invective  having  spent  itself, 
the  poem  ends  with  one  short  strain  of  altered  melody, 
exquisite  in  beauty  and  pathos : 


38  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  L1TERA  TURE. 

"  Add  one  kind  drop  unto  his  watery  tomb  : 
Weep,  ye  relenting  eyes  and  ears  ; 
See,  Death  himself  could  not  refrain — 
But  buried  him  in  tears."1 

The  genius  that  produced  this  dainty  music,  and  that 
might  have  achieved  a  high  career  in  poetry,  soon  became 
v/rapped  in  the  occupations  of  a  country-pastor,  and  \vas 
contcMit  to  utter  itself,  during  the  subsequent  fifty-nine 
years  of  its  earth-life,  in  the  commonplaces  of  theologic 
talk. 

VI. 

We  are  now  well  entered  upon  the  eighteenth  century, 
and  are  next  to  stand  before  a  most  notable  poetic  per- 
sonage, Nicholas  Noyes  of  Salem.  His  distinction  in  our 
literature  will  be  that  he  was  the  last  and  the  greatest  of 
our  poetical  punsters  and  image-manglers,  reproducing  in 
America,  even  during  the  earlier  years  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  the  most  grotesque  traits  of  a  form  of  poetry  that 
had  died  out  in  England,  near  the  middle  of  the  century 
before. 

Whatever  we  may  have  to  conclude  respecting  the 
poetry  of  Nicholas  Noyes.  we  shall  agree  that  his  per- 
sonal qualities  were  fine  and  strong.  He  was  born  in 
Massachusetts  in  1647 ;  was  graduated  at  Harvard  in 
1667,  at  the  tail  of  his  class  in  social  rank,  at  the  head 
of  it  in  scholarship ;  he  was  minister  of  Haddam  from 
1670  until  1683  ;  in  the  latter  year,  he  was  made  colleague 
of  the  venerable  John  Higginson  at  Salem  ;  and  at  Salem 
he  passed  the  remainder  of  his  life,  which  came  to  its 
close  in  1717.  This  celebrated  town  was  described  by  a 
physician,  thirty  years  after  Nicholas  Noyes  lived  in  it, 
as  one  in  which  "  hypochondriac,  hysteric,  and  other  ma- 
niac disorders  prevail,"  indeed,  "  seem  to  be  endemical."8 

1  The  entire  poem  is  in  N.  E.  Hist,  and  Geneal.  Reg.  IV.  89-90,  and  is 
dated  Charlestown,  Aug.  15,  1709. 
*W.  Dougla»s,  "Summary,"  I.  448. 


NICHOLAS  NO  YES, 


39 


There,  in  an  especial  manner,  appeared  the  frenzy  of  witch- 
craft, and  the  still  wilder  frenzy  of  persecuting  it ;  and 
in  this  latter  madness  the  brain  of  poor  Nicholas  Noyes 
was  sadly  entangled  for  a  time.  It  does  one  good  to  men- 
tion that,  when  at  last  his  lunacy  passed  off  and  he  saw 
the  folly  and  the  cruelty  of  his  conduct,  he  spoke  out  like 
a  man  and  confessed  it — naught  extenuating,  and  went 
about  among  the  people,  humbly  making  all  possible 
reparation  to  the  persons  whom  he  had  wronged.  This 
was,  perhaps,  the  only  cloud  that  ever  darkened  his  long, 
benignant,  studious  life, — a  life  that  seemed  to  lie  out- 
spread in  a  lovelier  and  still  brighter  light,  when  its  soli- 
tary shadow  was  withdrawn.  To  his  contemporaries,  he 
appeared  to  be  a  reader  of  all  literatures,  to  bring  into  his 
most  common  talk  great  entertainment  and  utility,  and  to 
be  faithful  and  even  illustrious  in  his  sacred  office ;  a  true 
friend  and  helper  of  his  kind. 

Doubtless  he  had  little  expectation  of  being  remem- 
bered in  our  literary  history ;  for  in  his  coyness,  though 
he  wrote  much,  he  shrank  from  the  publicity  of  print.  In 
prose,  only  two  productions  of  his  have  been  found, — a 
pleasant  biographical  sketch  contributed  by  him  to  the 
"Magnalia,"1  and  an  election  sermon  for  the  year  1698.* 
It  is  his  verse  that  is  phenomenal  in  our  literary  annals ; 
for,  even  in  his  old  age,  he  continued  to  write  the  sort  of 
poetry  that,  in  his  youth,  had  been  the  fashion,  both  in 
England  and  in  America, — the  degenerate  euphuism  of 
Donne,  of  Crashaw,  of  Quarles,  of  George  Herbert.  To 
this  appalling  type  of  poetry,  Nicholas  Noyes  faithfully 
adhered,  even  to  the  end  of  his  days,  unseduced  by  the 
rhythmical  heresies,  the  classic  innovations,  of  John  Dryden 
and  Alexander  Pope. 

When  Cotton  Mather  launched  his  "  Magnalia,"  Nicho- 
las Noyes  was  one  of  the  admiring  friends  who  stood 

1  Vol.  I.  483-488. 

'  Entitled  "  New  England's  Duty  and  Interest  to  be  an  Habitation  of  Jus. 
tice  and  a  Mountain  of  Holiness." 


40  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE, 

about  and  huzzaed,  as  the  huge  and  dreadful  hulk  glided 
down  the  well-greased  stocks  into  the  sea.  He  produced, 
in  fact,  "  a  prefatory  poem  on  that  excellent  book,"  par- 
ticularly addressed  "  to  the  candid  reader."  The  first  half 
of  the  poem  is  an  argument  for  the  enormous  value 

"  of  such  a  scribe  as  Cotton  Mather, 
Whose  piety,  whose  pains,  and  peerless  pen, 
Revives  New  England's  nigh-lost  origin  ;  " 

and  the  argument  is  based  upon  the  indisputable  fact 
that  the  American  aborigines,  whatever  else  they  may 
have  had,  had  no  such  scribe  as  Cotton  Mather,  and  that, 
in  consequence,  their  history  had  perished.  Concerning 
all  these  miserable  and  Matherless  nations  we  ask,  and  we 
ask  in  vain, 

"  Who  was  their  father,  Japhet,  Shem,  or  Cham; 
And  how  they  straddled  to  the  antipodes 
To  look  another  world  beyond  the  seas; 
And  when,  and  why,  and  where  they  last  broke  ground, 
What  risks  they  ran,  where  they  first  anchoring  found  ? 

What  charters  had  they  ;  what  immunities  ; 

What  altars,  temples,  cities,  colonies, 

Did  they  erect ;  who  were  their  public  spirits  ?  " 

But  since,  in  Cotton  Mather,  the  white  inhabitants  of 
America  had  at  last  found  a  worthy  historian,  such  ob- 
livion can  never  fall  upon  them  : 

"  Heads  of  our  tribes,  whose  corps  are  under  ground, 
Their  names  and  fames  in  chronicles  renowned, 
Begemmed  on  golden  ouches  he  hath  set, 
Past  envy's  teeth  and  time's  corroding  fret."  ' 

Perhaps  there  were  then  in  New  England  other  persons 
that  could  equal  Nicholas  Noyes  in  the  writing  of  "  prefa- 
tory poems ; "  but,  throughout  all  the  colonial  times,  he 
had  no  rival  there  as  an  epitaph-maker,  and  as  a  fabricator 
of  punning  elegies.  In  this  realm  of  service,  he  seems  to 
have  possessed  a  skill  that  not  art  alone,  that  only  genius 

1  "  Magnalia,"  I.  iq. 


NICHOLAS  NO  YES.  41 

with  art,  could  have  given  him,  at  perfectly  emptying  his 
verses  of  the  last  atom  of  beauty,  and  at  so  packing  them 
with  quirks,  quibbles,  conceits,  and  the  most  unexpected 
contortions  of  unlovely  imagery,  as  to  impart  to  them  a 
sort  of  horrible  fascination — a  mirthfulness  in  the  presence 
of  which  the  reader  writhes  in  pain  and  disgust. 

When,  in  1708,  his  aged  associate,  the  noble  John  Hig- 
ginson,  died,  Nicholas  Noyes  lovingly  described  him  as  one 

who 

*•  For  rich  array  cared  not  a  fig, 
And  wore  Elisha's  periwig; 
At  ninety-three  had  comely  face 
Adorned  with  majesty  and  grace  ; 
Before  he  went  among  the  dead, 
He  children's  children's  children  had." 

In  1715,  there  died  in  Salem  a  much  younger  man  than 
Higginson,  the  Reverend  Joseph  Green  ;  and  as  his  name 
presented  a  boundless  opening  for  an  elegiac  punster,  his 
brother  Noyes  poured  out  over  his  memory  nine  pages  of 
most  whimsical  and  distracting  verses : 

"  In  God's  house  we  of  late  did  see 
A  Green  and  growing  olive  tree. 
Twas  planted  by  a  living  spring 
That  always  made  it  flourishing. 
Filled  it  with  sap  and  oily  juice 
That  leaves  and  fruit  and  light  produce ; 
An  holy  tree,  whose  very  wood 
For  temple-use  was  choice  and  good." 

Thus  the  poet  goes  forward,  pitilessly  ringing  changes 
on  the  verdant  name  of  the  dead  gentleman  ;  speaking  of 
"  Green  olive  leaves,"  of  "  pastures  Green  ; "  saying  that 

"  Summer  and  Winter,  Green  was  he, 
Most  like  the  noble  olive  tree  ;  " 

and  at  last  taking  leave  of  him  with  this  relenting  couplet : 

"His  Master's  work  he  did  so  ply, 
He  did  but  just  get  time  to  die." ' 

>  This  elegy  is  in  the  library  of  the  Mass.  Hist.  Soc. 


42  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE, 

The  supreme  poetic  opportunity  in  the  career  of  Nicho- 
las Noyes  occurred,  however,  some  years  earlier,  when  a 
Reverend  friend  of  his,  James  Brayley  of  Roxbury,  became 
afflicted  with  the  Stone.  To  this  unhappy  man  the  poet, 
accordingly,  sent  some  verses,  both  consolatory  and  con- 
gratulatory, which  certainly  ought  to  establish  the  fame 
of  Nicholas  Noyes  as  the  most  gifted  and  brilliant  master 
ever  produced  in  America,  of  the  most  execrable  form  of 
poetry  to  which  the  English  language  was  ever  degraded. 
In  this  poem,  the  author  flatteringly  expresses  astonish, 
ment,  not  only  at  the  fortitude  of  his  friend,  but  at  his 
versatility,  both  in  doing  and  in  suffering: 

"  What !  in  one  breath  both  live  and  die, 
Groan,  laugh,  sigh,  smile,  cry,  versify  ? 
Is  this  the  Stone  ?     Are  these  the  pains 
Of  that  disease  that  plagues  the  reins  ? 
That  slyly  steals  into  the  bladder, 
Then  bites  and  stings  like  to  the  adder  ? 
Is  this  the  scourge  of  studious  men, 
That  leaves  unwhipt  scarce  five  of  ten  ?  " 

He  then  advances  into  the  merits  of  his  theme,  using  the 
name  of  his  friend's  disease  as  a  pivot  on  which  to  revolve 
the  antic  and  frantic  creations  of  his  fancy: 

"  For  if  thou  shouldst  be  Stoned  to  death, 
And  this  way  pelted  out  of  breath, 
Thou  wilt  like  Stephen  fall  asleep, 
And  free  from  pain  forever  keep." 

The  poet  then  proceeds  to  spiritual  exhortation : 

"  That  Stone  which  builders  did  refuse, 
For  thy  foundation  choose  and  use. 
Yea,  think  what  Christ  for  thee  hath  done, 
Who  took  an  harder,  heavier,  Stone 
Out  of  thine  heart ;  " 

and  he  asks  him  to  remember  this  comforting  truth,  that, 
great  as  may  be  the  sufferings  inflicted  on  him  by  the 


NEW  SCHOOL   OF  POETRY. 


43 


Stone  in  this  world,  they  are  vastly  less  than  the  suffer. 
ings  of  the  damned  in  the  next,  some  of  whom 

"  roll  the  Sisyphean  Stone." 

With  this  joyous  reflection,  he  also  invites  him  to  antici 
pate  the  bliss  of  heaven,  where 

"  shall  hid  manna  be  thy  fare, 
In  which  no  grit  nor  gravel  are  ; 
Yea,  Christ  will  give  thee  a  White  Stone 
With  a  New  Name  engraved  thereon." « 

VII. 

For  a  considerable  time  before  Nicholas  Noyes  had 
ceased  from  his  detestable  labors,  the  new  school  of  poetry 
in  England,  represented  first  by  Dryden  and  then  by  Pope, 
had  found  sympathetic  pupils  in  America.  With  the  ad- 
vancing years  of  the  first  half  of  the  eighteenth  century, 
the  authority  of  this  school  became  complete  among  us. 
The  unloveliness  of  the  earlier  manner  of  poetry  dis- 
appeared ;  and,  in  place  of  it,  we  find  the  smooth  and 
mechanic  melody,  the  shallow  elegance,  the  monotonous 
grace,  that,  to  a  large  extent,  served  as  substitutes  for 
real  thought  and  passion.  During  the  earlier  portion  of 
the  century,  an  English  scholar,  Francis  Knapp,  a  gradu- 
ate of  St.  John's  college,  Oxford,  lived  the  life  of  a  liter- 
ary recluse,  at  Watertown,  Massachusetts ;  and  glorying 
in  a  personal  acquaintance  with  Alexander  Pope,  he  at- 
tempted to  reproduce,  on  "  the  bleak  Atlantic  shore,"  and 
amid  "  solitudes  obscene,"  the  poetic  notes  of  his  master.* 
The  two  eloquent  preachers,  Benjamin  Colman  and  Mather 
Byles,  both  caught  the  new  tune  in  English  verse ;  and  for 

1  This  monstrous  production  was  printed  in  broadside,  and  in  that  form  was 
bound  with  the  file  of  "  The  Boston  News  Letter"  now  in  possession  of  the 
New  York  Historical  Society.  It  thus  follows  No.  173,  for  Aug.  4-11,  1706. 

*  Poem  by  Francis  Knapp,  among  the  "  Recommendatory  Poems,"  pre- 
fixed to  Pope's  works.  See,  also,  "  Biographical  Sketches,"  by  Samuel  L. 
Knapp,  140-143  ;  and  Duyckinck's  "  Cycl.  of  Am.  Lit."  77-78,  Simons's  ed. 


44 


HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITER  A  TURE. 


nearly  fifty  years,  with  a  fatal  facility,  to  the  vast  admira- 
tion of  their  parishioners,  they  both  continued  to  evolve 
twaddling  variations  upon  it.  The  gifted  daughter  of 
Benjamin  Colman,  Jane  Turell,  was  instructed  by  her 
father  to  regard  Sir  Richard  Blackmore  as  a  poet  "  far 
above  all  her  praises,"  and,  next  "  after  the  Reverend 
Doctor  Watts,"  as  "  the  laureate  of  the  Church  of  Christ ;  " ' 
and  to  this  knightly  and  medicinal  bard  she  addressed 
verses — not  unworthy  of  his  own  pen.2 

In  Roger  Wolcott,  we  have  still  another  early  example 
of  the  American  knack  of  doing  a  great  many  things,  and 
of  doing  them  tolerably  well, — a  knack  that  does  not  be- 
come intolerable,  except  when  it  thrusts  itself,  as  it  has  a 
dangerous  fondness  for  doing,  into  the  sphere  of  poetry. 
Born  in  Windsor,  Connecticut,  in  1679,  in  a  wild  frontier 
settlement,  he  had  never  school  or  school-master  for  a  day  ; 
at  the  age  of  twelve,  he  was  bound  as  an  apprentice  to  a 
trade ;  at  the  age  of  twenty-one,  he  set  up  for  himself  in 
business  in  his  native  town  ;  he  was  diligent,  thrifty,  studi- 
ous ;  he  turned  his  attention  to  public  affairs,  military  and 
political,  and  became  great  in  both  ;  in  a  campaign  for  the 
conquest  of  Canada,  in  1711,  he  was  commissary  of  the 
Connecticut  troops  ;  at  the  capture  of  Louisburg  in  1745, 
he  was  major-general ;  he  also  rose  through  many  stages 
of  civil  promotion,  becoming  member  of  the  colonial  as- 
sembly and  of  the  colonial  council,  county-judge,  deputy- 
governor,  chief-justice  of  the  superior  court ;  at  last,  in 
1751,  he  became  governor,  and  continued  so  for  four  years ; 
he  died  in  1767,  a  wise,  strong,  apt,  devout,  and  whole- 
some man.  He  began  life  in  ignorance  and  poverty;  he 
ended  it,  at  nearly  ninety  years  of  age,  crowned  with 
earthly  prosperity,  full  of  honor  and  knowledge,  a  Nestor, 
a  patriot,  a  sage. 

His  one  human  frailty  lurked  in  an  invincible  illusion 
that  he  was  a  poet ;  and,  surely,  the  man  who  could  storm 

1  "  Memoirs  of  Mrs.  Jane  Turell,"  by  E.  Turell,  29-30.       *  Ibid.  28-29. 


ROGER   WOLCOTT.  45 

and  carry  so  many  heights  of  difficulty — might  he  not 
hope  to  carry  by  storm  the  heights  of  Parnassus  also  ? 
Other  poets  had  found  inspiration  in  patriotic  memories , 
he  also.  Accordingly,  in  commemoration  of  the  early 
valor  and  statesmanship  of  his  own  Connecticut,  he  wrote 
a  long  poem,  with  a  title  almost  as  prosaic,  if  possible,  as 
the  poem  to  which  it  belongs :  "  A  Brief  Account  of  the 
Agency  of  the  Honorable  John  Winthrop,  Esquire,  in  the 
Court  of  King  Charles  the  Second,  A.D.,  1662,  when  he 
obtained  a  Charter  for  the  Colony  of  Connecticut." 

This  great  historical  poem,  the  author  forbore  not  to 
publish  even  in  his  lifetime,  but  courageously  gave  it  to 
the  world,1  along  with  other  specimens  of  his  verse,  in  a 
volume  called  "  Poetical  Meditations,  being  the  Improve- 
ment of  some  vacant  Hours,"  published  at  New  London 
in  1725.  Probably  the  best  passage  in  the  book  is  this, 
entitled  "  The  Heart  is  Deep  " : 

"  He  that  can  trace  a  ship  making  her  way 
Amidst  the  threatening  surges  of  the  sea  ; 
Or  track  a  towering  eagle  in  the  air ; 
Or  on  a  rock  find  the  impressions  there 
Made  by  a  serpent's  footsteps  ;  who  surveys 
The  subtle  intrigues  that  a  young  man  lays 
In  his  sly  courtship  of  a  harmless  maid, 
Whereby  his  wanton  amours  are  conveyed 
Into  her  breast ;  'tis  he  alone  that  can 
Find  out  the  cursed  policies  of  man."* 

The  ordinary  stroke  and  height  of  its  art  may  be  seen 
in  these  lines,  on  Man : 

"  For  having  once  rebelled  against  his  duty, 
Opacous  sin  soon  blasted  all  his  beauty  ; "  • 

or  in  these  lines,  on  Pride : 


1  It  was  reprinted  by  the  Massachusetts  Historical  Society  in  their  Collec- 
tions, first  series,  IV.  262-298. 
•  "  Poetical  Meditations,"  ia.  *  Ibid.  5. 


46  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

"  Pride  goes  before  destruction, 

And  haughtiness  before  a  fall  ; 
Whoever  pores  his  merits  on, 
Shall  be  endangered  there  withal."  ' 

Upon  the  whole,  the  "Poetical  Meditations"  of  Roger 
Wolcott  are  sad  rubbish.  He  himself  described  them  as 
"the  improvement  of  some  vacant  hours."  One  finds  it 
hard  to  imagine  by  what  possibility  such  things  could  have 
been  an  improvement  upon  any  sort  of  vacancy  likely  to 
occur  in  this  good  man's  hours.  For  ourselves,  we  could 
have  been  content,  had  his  hours  remained  vacant ;  and 
putting  our  own  interpretation  on  his  words,  we  thorough- 
ly agree  with  the  author  himself  when,  in  one  place,  he 
drops  the  judicious  observation, 

"  These  very  Meditations  are 
Quite  insupportable  to  bear."  * 

VIII. 

Among  writers  of  poetry  intended  to  be  humorous,  we 
encounter,  in  this  period,  at  least  two  that  may  require  a 
moment's  notice.  One  of  these  is  John  Seccomb,  the 
author  of  "  Father  Abbey's  Will,"  and  of  "  The  Letter  to 
the  Widow  Abbey," — a  writer,  who,  by  some  untoward  ac- 
cident, has  had  an  extraordinary  notoriety  in  our  early 
literary  history.  He  was  graduated  at  Harvard  College 
in  1728,  at  the  age  of  twenty  ;  was  pastor  of  a  church  in 
the  town  of  Harvard  from  1733  to  1757;  then,  vexed  by 
a  calumny  born,  it  is  said,8  of  the  jealous  imagination  of 
his  wife,  he  withdrew  from  that  parish  and  from  the  colony 
likewise,  and  betook  himself  as  far  as  possible  from  the 
rumor  of  the  scandal  that  had  besmirched  him,  settling  in 
Chester,  Nova  Scotia ;  where  he  served  as  minister,  appar- 
ently in  clean  repute,  during  the  remainder  of  his  long 
life,  dying  in  1793.  Had  there  been  in  him  any  germ  of 

1  "Poetical  Meditations,"  7.  *  Ibid.  16. 

*  J.  L.  Sibley,  in  his  ed.  of  "  Father  Abbey's  Will,"  8-9. 


JOHN  SECCOMB.  47 

literary  force,  the  extreme  popularity,  both  in  England 
and  in  America,  achieved  by  his  two  effusions  of  metrical 
balderdash,  would  have  prompted  him  to  rise  to  something 
better,  even  in  the  vein  of  humorous  verse.  He  lived 
more  than  sixty  years  after  the  perpetration  of  the  ballads 
referred  to ;  but  he  appears  never  again  to  have  issued 
into  print,  excepting  twice,  each  time  for  the  publication 
of  a  sermon,  the  first  at  an  ordination,  the  second  at  a 
funeral,  neither  discourse  being  of  any  notable  merit.  It 
was  in  1/30,  while  he  was  still  at  Cambridge  awaiting  his 
second  degree,  that  a  queer  old  personage  named  Matthew 
Abdy,  for  many  years  sweeper,  bed-maker,  and  bottle- 
washer  to  the  college,  came  to  his  death ;  and  John  Sec- 
comb  conceived  the  harmless  idea  of  celebrating  the  event 
by  writing  a  pretended  will,  wherein  the  old  fellow  is  made 
to  bequeath  to  his  widow  all  his  real  and  personal  estate, 
the  several  paltry  items  of  which  are  reeled  off  in  some 
fourteen  stanzas  of  doggerel,  the  flatness  and  vulgarity  of 
which  may  be  sufficiently  ascertained  by  a  single  one  of 
them  : 

"  A  greasy  hat, 

My  old  ram  cat. 
A  yard  and  half  of  linen, 

A  woolen  fleece, 

A  pot  of  grease, 
In  order  for  your  spinning." 

This  miserable  stuff,  well  enough  for  an  obscure  esca- 
pade of  rustic  satire  or  of  under-graduate  wit,  happened 
to  catch  the  attention  of  the  governor  of  Massachusetts, 
who,  deeming  it  something  wonderful,  sent  it  to  England. 
Strangely  enough,  it  was  at  once  published  there,  both 
in  "  The  Gentleman's  Magazine "  and  in  "  The  London 
Magazine  ;  "  and  it  seems  to  have  been  widely  read  in  the 
mother-country,  as  a  just  specimen  of  the  poetic  attain- 
ments and  of  the  general  literary  taste  of  the  Americans. 
It  is  hardly  to  be  wondered  at,  that,  instructed  by  such 
tokens,  the  English  people  should  have  formed  very  chast- 


48  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITER  A  TURE. 

ened  expectations  of  the  poetic  destinies  of  their  Ameri- 
can children ;  or,  that,  nearly  a  hundred  years  afterward, 
one  famous  English  poet  should  have  written  to  another 
one,  with  reference  to  an  American  then  in  England,  "  I 
suppose  an  American  enquires  for  live  poets  as  you  or  I 
should  do  in  America  for  a  skunk  or  an  opossum." l  The 
uncommon  notice  paid  in  England  to  Seccomb's  lines, 
naturally  increased  their  celebrity  in  America :  they  were 
circulated  here  in  newspapers  and  in  broadsides ;  seve- 
ral imitations  of  them  were  produced  ;  and  New  England 
mothers,  we  are  told,  were  wont  to  recite  them  for  the 
diversion  of  their  children, — a  service,  indeed,  in  which 
they  may  have  been  not  ineffective,  since  they  rise,  per- 
haps, to  the  intellectual  altitude  of  the  nursery.  The 
author's  true  place  as  a  melodist  seems  to  be  among  the 
tuneful  posterity  of  Mother  Goose. 

A  humorist  of  far  more  palpable  merit  was  Joseph 
Green,  who  was  born  in  Boston  in  1706;  was  graduated  at 
Harvard  when  twenty  years  old  ;  became  a  successful 
merchant  in  his  native  city ;  took  some  interest  in  colonial 
politics ;  upon  the  rupture  with  England  became  a  loyal- 
ist, went  into  exile,  and  passed  the  last  years  of  his  life  in 
England,  dying  there  in  1780.  In  his  time,  he  had  great 
reputation  for  wit,  particularly  in  the  form  of  satirical 
verse.  His  favorite  view  of  things  was  the  facetious  one ; 
he  was  convivial  and  hilarious ;  he  loved  to  mitigate  by 
his  waggeries  the  sombre  tints  of  life  at  the  Puritan 
metropolis ;  and  neither  religion  nor  death,  it  was  be- 
lieved, could  awe  him  into  gravity,  as  is  partly  intimated 
in  this  epitaph,  which  one  of  his  friends  wrote  for  his 
tomb-stone,  long  before  he  had  need  of  one : 

"  Siste,  Viator  !     Here  lies  one, 

Whose  life  was  whim,  whose  soul  was  pun  ; 


1  Robert  Southey  to  Walter  Scott,  in  Life  of  Southcy  by  his  Son,  Harper's 
ed.  364. 


JOSEPH  GREEN.  49 

And  if  you  go  too  near  his  hearse, 
He'll  joke  you,  both  in  prose  and  verse." 

It  may  be  that,  upon  inspection  of  such  examples  of 
his  wit  as  have  floated  down  to  us,  we  shall  find  that 
they  scarcely  justify  the  ecstasies  of  laughter  with  which, 
when  first  delivered,  they  seem  to  have  been  greeted ; 
but,  besides  the  fact  that  the  pungency  of  personal  satire 
always  evaporates  with  time  and  distance,  we  need  to 
reflect  that  Joseph  Green's  fellow  citizens  were  not  exactly 
persons  abandoned  to  mirthful  ways,  and  that  they  are, 
upon  the  whole,  to  be  pardoned  if  they  did  welcome,  at 
its  full  value,  any  honest  effort  for  their  diversion.  Of  his 
merit,  no  small  part  lay  in  his  facility ;  and  long  after  he 
was  gone,  the  people  of  Boston  kept  alive  there  the  mem- 
ory of  his  exploits  of  extemporized  witticism  in  verse. 
Thus,  one  day,  while  passing  along  the  street,  he  observed 
that  the  Fourth  Latin  School  of  Boston  was  being  taken 
down,  in  order  to  make  room  for  the  enlargement  of  an 
adjoining  church ;  upon  which  incident,  Green  instantly 
composed  this  epigram  : 

" '  A  fig  for  your  learning  !     I  tell  you  the  town, 
To  make  the  church  larger,  must  pull  the  school  down.' 
•  Unluckily  spoken,'  replied  Master  Birch; 
'Then  learning,  I  fear,  stops  the  growth  of  the  church.'"1 

On  another  occasion,  a  club  of  good  fellows  in  Boston, 
of  whom  Green  was  prince,  went  to  call  upon  one  of  their 
own  number,  named  John  Checkley,  who  was  just  then 
recovering  from  a  long  and  dangerous  illness.  This  gen- 
tleman, it  appears,  was  noted  for  the  ugliness  of  his  coun- 
tenance, at  that  time  rendered  still  more  forbidding  by  the 
ravages  of  disease.  During  the  visit,  it  was  agreed  that  as 
a  mark  of  their  satisfaction  over  Checkley's  recovery,  his 
portrait  should  be  painted  by  Smibert ;  and  Green  was 
appointed  to  write  a  few  appropriate  verses  to  be  inscribed 


1  Given  in  S.  Kettcll,  "Specimens  of  Am.  Poetry,"  I.  139. 
VOL.  II. — 4 


5O  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

beneath  the  portrait.  Without  waiting  for  the  artist  to 
do  his  work,  the  wit  immediately  drew  forth  his  note- 
book, and,  inspired  by  the  countenance  of  poor  Checkley, 
at  once  performed  his  part  of  the  task,  to  the  general  satis- 
faction : 

"  John,  had  thy  sickness  snatched  thee  from  our  sight 
And  sent  thee  to  the  realms  of  endless  night, 
Posterity  would  then  have  never  known 
Thine  eye,  thy  beard,  thy  cowl  and  shaven  crown; 
But  now,  redeemed  by  Smibert's  faithful  hand, 
Of  immortality  secure  you  stand. 
When  nature  into  ruin  shall  be  hurled, 
And  the  last  conflagration  burn  the  world, 
This  piece  shall  then  survive  the  general  evil, — 
For  flames,  we  know,  cannot  consume  the  Devil."1 

His  satirical  wit  sometimes  took  a  more  deliberate  and 
a  larger  flight,  as  is  shown  in  several  rather  notable  pieces 
of  his  that  have  been  preserved.  One  of  these  is  a  parody 
on  a  hymn — a  beautiful  and  impressive  hymn — written  at 
sea  by  Mather  Byles;2  another  is  "A  Mournful  Lamenta- 
tion for  the  sad  and  deplorable  death  of  Mr.  Old  Tenor  ;  "* 
another  is  "The  Grand  Arcanum  Detected  ;  or,  A  wonder- 
ful phenomenon  explained,  which  has  baffled  the  scrutiny 
of  many  ages;  by  Me,  Phil.  Arcanos,  Gent.  Student  in 
Astrology ;  "  4  and  still  another  is  "  An  Entertainment  for  a 
Winter  Evening,"  being  a  satire  upon  an  ostentatious  Ma- 
sonic celebration  in  Boston  on  Saint  John's  day.  In  the 
latter,  the  poet  notices,  particularly,  the  march  of  the 
brotherhood  from  the  tavern  to  the  church,  the  chaplain's 
discourse  there,  and  then  the  march  of  the  brotherhood 
back  again  from  the  church  to  the  tavern  : 

1  Samuel  L.  Knapp,  "Biographical  Sketches  of  Eminent  Lawyers,  States- 
men, and  Men  of  Letters,"  135. 

J  Both  the  hymn  and  its  parody  are  in  "  The  Belknap  Papers,"  5  Mass. 
Hist.  Soc.  Coll.  II.  70-72. 

1  Originally  printed  in  1750,  on  a  half-sheet  of  foolscap  paper  ;  reprinted 
in  "  Am.  Journal  of  Numismatics,"  April,  1871,  8o-Si. 

4  S.  Kettell,  "  Specimens  of  Am.  Poetry,"  TIT.  382. 


JOSEPH  GREEN.  51 

"  Come,  goddess,  and  our  ears  regale 
With  a  diverting  Christmas  tale. 
O  come,  and  in  thy  verse  declare 
Who  were  the  men,  and  what  they  were, 
And  what  their  names,  and  what  their  fame, 
And  what  the  cause  for  which  they  came, 
To  house  of  God  from  house  of  ale, 
And  how  the  parson  told  his  tale  ; 
How  they  returned,  in  manner  odd, 
To  house  of  ale,  from  house  of  God."1 

Masons  at  church  !  Strange  auditory  ! 
And  yet  we  have  as  strange  in  story. 
For  saints,  as  history  attests, 
Have  preached  to  fishes,  birds,  and  beasts. 

So  good  Saint  Francis,  man  of  grace, 
Himself  preached  to  the  braying  race; 
And  further,  as  the  story  passes, 
Addressed  them  thus — '  My  brother  asses. "*« 

His  version  of  the  discourse  is  somewhat  ludicrous ;  and 
in  depicting  the  march  back  to  the  tavern,  he  gives  bur- 
lesque portraits  of  conspicuous  and  well-known  personages 
in  the  procession.  One  of  these  personages,  a  worthy 
citizen  by  the  name  of  Pue,  distinguished  for  habits  that 
gave  a  brilliant  color  to  his  nose,  is  thus  described : 

"  Who's  he  comes  next  ?    Tis  Pue  by  name, 
Pue  by  his  nose  well  known  to  fame ; 
This,  when  the  generous  juice  recruits, 
Around  a  brighter  radiance  shoots. 
So,  on  some  promontory's  height, 
For  Neptune's  sons  the  signal  light 
Shines  fair,  and  fed  by  unctuous  stream 
Sends  off  to  sea  a  livelier  beam."  * 


IX. 

During  the  entire  colonial  age,  Americans  lived  under 
some  menace  of  harm,  either  from  the  Indians,  or  from  the 

1  Second  edition.  5-6.  «  Ibid.  7-8.  *  Ibid.  I* 


52  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

French,  or  from  both.  Hence,  they  lived  in  a  state  of  con- 
stant war,  or  of  constant  readiness  for  war.  As  might  be 
expected,  the  vehement  martial  spirit  engendered  by  such 
conditions,  found  voice  and  stimulation  in  numerous  war- 
songs  that  made  up  at  least  in  ferocity  for  what  they 
lacked  in  poetical  merit ;  while  the  most  memorable  inci- 
dents in  all  these  military  campaigns  were  enacted  over 
again  in  rough  popular  ballads,  such  as  "  The  Gallant 
Church,"  "Smith's  Affair  at  Sidelong  Hill,"  "The  God- 
less French  Soldier,"  and  especially  "  Lovewell's  Fight." l 
In  the  year  1756,  there  appeared  a  little  book,  without 
mention  of  the  place  of  publication  or  of  the  author's 
Christian  name,  bearing  this  title:  "  Tilden's  Miscella- 
neous Poems  on  Divers  Occasions,  chiefly  to  animate  and 
rouse  the  soldiers."  In  his  preface,  the  author  describes 
himself  as  a  man  above  seventy  years  of  age.  He  excuses 
himself  "  for  digging  up  rusty  talents  out  of  the  earth,  so 
long  lain  hid,"  by  saying  that,  when  young,  he  "  was  bash- 
ful and  could  not  stand  the  gust  of  a  laugh,"  but,  that 
having  for  sixty  years  seen  many  an  old  scribbler  come 
off  with  impunity,  he  was  at  last  emboldened  to  venture 
upon  authorship  himself.  How  much  the  soldiers  must 
have  been  animated  and  roused  by  "  Tilden's  Miscella- 
neous Poems,"  may  be  inferred  from  the  following  speci- 
men of  them  : 

"  Kind  sirs,  if  that  you  will  accept 
This  petty  pamphlet  as  a  gift, 
With  all  the  powers  I  have  left, 
I  will  consult  your  honor  ; 

'These  titles  are  in  R.  W.  Griswold,  "Curiosities  of  Am.  Lit."  26. 
"  Lovewell's  Fight "  is  printed  in  that  hook;  also,  in  Samuel  Penhallow, 
"  Indian  Wars,"  129-136.  A  song-writer  deserving  some  slight  mention  is 
John  Osborn,  born  1713,  graduated  at  Harvard  1735  ;  and  died  1753.  His 
most  notable  production  is  "A  Whaling  Song,"  said  to  have  been  long  in  use 
among  our  sailors.  It  is  reprinted  in  S.  Kettell,  "  Specimens  Am.  Poetry," 
I.  120-122.  It  is  fortunate  that  his  verses  were  acceptable  on  the  sea — they 
had  small  chance  of  being  so  on  land.  He  was  probably  a  poet  among 
sailors,  and  a  sailor  among  poets. 


JOHN  MA  YLEM.  53 

But  if  you  throw  her  quite  away, 
As  I  confess  you  justly  may, 
I've  nothing  further  for  to  say, 

But  spit  and  tread  upon  her."  ' 

Another  poet,  whom  we  are  now  to  speak  of,  should  be 
ushered  into  this  history  with  the  blast  of  a  bugle  and  the 
roar  of  artillery ;  for,  by  his  own  account,  he  was,  above 
all  other  things,  a  battle-bard,  revelling  in  rhymes  and 
bloodshed  and  the  blaze  of  war.  He  published  two  very 
military  and  sonorific  poems,  upon  the  title-pages  of  which 
he  proclaimed  himself  as  "  John  Maylem,  Philo-Bellum." 
The  first  of  these  poems  is  "  The  Conquest  of  Louisburg,"1 
and  is  a  narrative,  in  rhymed  pentameters,  of  the  exhila- 
rating effort  of  New  England  heroism,  indicated  by  the 
title.  The  whole  poem  is  tumultuous,  gory,  and  gigan- 
tesque,  as  these  lines  may  show  : 

"  But  lo  !  while  ready  for  the  charge  they  stood, 
Death,  blunderbuss,  artillery,  and  blood  ! 
Blue  smoke  and  purple  flame  around  appear, 
And  the  hot  bullets  hail  from  front  to  rear. 
Tremendous  Fate  by  turns  incessant  flies, 
While  the  black  sulphur  clouds  the  azure  skies. 
And  ghastly  savages,  with  fearful  yell, 
Invoke  their  kindred  of  profoundest  hell." 

This  gusty  warrior,  who  could  hardly  have  moved  upon 
his  enemy  with  any  weapons  more  awe-inspiring  or  de- 
structive than  his  own  verses,  published  another  poem, 
named  "  Gallic  Perfidy."  '  In  this  work,  he  tells  the  story 
of  the  capture  of  himself  and  his  military  companions,  at 
the  hands  of  Indians  and  Frenchmen  under  Montcalm ; 
of  his  own  great  sufferings  during  his  captivity;  finally,  of 
his  redemption  and  return.  He  begins  by  informing  us 
that  he  is  the  same  poetic  individual, 

"  who,  of  late,  in  epic  strains  essayed, 
And  sung  the  hero  on  Acadia's  plains  ;  " 

1  "  Tilden's  Miscellaneous  Poems,"  18. 

»  Boston,  1758.  »  Boston,  1758. 


54  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  L1TERA  TURE. 

also,  that  he  now  intends  to  sing  again,  and  about  some, 
thing  else  •„ 

"But  yet  in  rougher  strain  ;  for  softer  rhyme 
Seems  not  adapt  to  this  my  solemn  theme." ' 

Having  thus  given  a  timely  hint  of  the  peculiarly  awful 
nature  of  the  subject  to  be  sung  about,  he  pauses  in  order 
to  invoke  an  inspiration  that  shall  be  appropriate.  Cer- 
tainly, no  common  one  will  answer  the  present  purpose: 

"  Not  to  invoke 

A  vulgar  muse, — ye  powers  of  Fury,  lend 
Some  mighty  frenzy  to  enrage  my  breast 
With  solemn  song,  beyond  all  nature's  strain  ! 
For  such  the  scene  of  which  I  mean  to  sing."8 

His  prayer  appears  to  have  been  instantaneously  an- 
swered ;  for,  in  the  very  next  line,  he  is  able  to  chronicle 
this  state  of  things  : 

"  Enough  !  I  rave  ! — the  Furies  rack  my  brain  ! 
I  feel  their  influence  now  inspire  my  song  ! 
My  laboring  muse  swells  with  the  raving  god  ! 
I  feel  him  here  !     My  head  turns  round  ! — 'twill  burst ! 
So  have  I  seen  a  bomb,  with  livid  train, 
Emitted  from  a  mortar,  big  with  death, 
And  fraught,  full  fraught,  with  hell's  combustibles, 
Lay  dreadful  on  the  ground  ;  then  with  a  force 
Stupendous,  shiver  in  a  thousand  atoms  ! 
But,  on,  my  muse  !  " 3 

X. 

In  the  year  1740,  there  died  at  Cambridge,  at  the  age 

1  "  Gallic  Perfidy,"  2.  2  Ibid.  3. 

3  Ibid.  3.  For  this  remarkable  poet  our  literature  is  indebted  to  Har- 
vard College,  where  he  was  graduated  in  1715.  The  ordinary  accounts 
of  him  say  that  he  died  in  1742.  As,  however,  the  capture  of  Louisburg  did 
not  take  place  until  1745,  and  as  he  wrote  a  poem  on  that  affair,  it  seems 
somewhat  improbable  that  he  was  then  dead.  Indeed,  I  have  come  acrosi 
no  satisfactory  evidence  to  show  that  he  is  dead  yet. 


POEMS  BY  SEYEXAL  HANDS.  55 

of  thirty-six,  a  man  named  John  Adams,  who  as  scholar, 
preacher,  and  poet,  had  won  high  reputation  for  himself. 
He  was  the  son  of  a  Nova-Scotian  ;  was  of  the  Harvard 
class  of  1721  ;  had  served  as  minister  in  Newport  and  in 
Philadelphia ;  seemed  to  his  friends  to  be  quite  a  prodigy 
of  genius  and  learning,  being  a  master  of  nine  languages, 
and  familiar  with  the  best  writings  in  ancient  and  modern 
literatures;  during  his  lifetime  had  gained  special  glory 
by  his  verses,  particularly  a  satirical  poem  on  the  love  of 
money.  His  death  came  as  a  premature  and  cruel  ending 
of  a  career  that  promised  very  considerable  things.  Five 
years  afterward,  the  principal  fragments  of  his  poetic  estate 
were  gathered  up  and  printed  in  a  book,  entitled  "  Poems 
on  Several  Occasions."  It  contains  translations  from  the 
Bible  and  from  Horace,  and  such  not  unprecedented  things 
as  verses  on  "  Melancholy,"  "  Contentment,"  "  Joy,"  "  So- 
ciety," "  The  Perfection  of  Beauty,"  and  "  The  King  of 
Zion  ; " — poems  not  absolutely  indispensable  to  the  world's 
continued  existence  or  peace  of  mind.  Doubtless,  the 
Reverend  John  Adams  was  an  accomplished,  pious,  and 
pleasant  gentleman  in  his  time  ;  but  in  poetry  he  sounded 
no  note  that  was  not  conventional  and  imitative. 

In  the  year  1744,  there  came  from  the  press  in  Boston  a 
little  book  of  somewhat  ambitious  aspect,  "  A  Collection 
of  Poems  by  Several  Hands."  Being  the  product  of  a 
literary  combination,  it  was  doubtless  looked  upon  at  the 
time  as  a  work  representative  of  the  poetic  taste  and  skill 
then  attained  in  the  land ;  and  it  has  since  been  described 
as  a  landmark  of  literary  progress  up  to  that  date.  If  it 
had  such  significance,  the  indications  are  rather  depress- 
ing ;  they  report  little  more  than  weak  reverberations  of 
the  imagery  and  the  syllables  of  Alexander  Pope.  The 
book  seems,  in  fact,  to  have  been  the  offspring  of  an  ami- 
able conspiracy  on  the  part  of  some  literary  friends  of 
Mather  Byles,  to  accomplish— and  with  his  own  entire 
approbation— the  poetical  apotheosis  of  that  gentleman, 
and  to  induce  the  public  to  believe  that  one  of  the  most 


56  H1STOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

gifted  of  its  pulpit  orators  was  likewise  a  very  great  poet. 
The  first  poem,  attributed  to  the  Reverend  John  Adams, 
is  a  metrical  gush  of  adulation  directed  toward  Byles. 
The  latter  is  the 

"  charming  poet  whose  distinguished  lays 
Excite  our  wonder,  and  surmount  our  praise;  "  l 

and  he  is  explicitly  told  to  his  face  that  there  are  points 
of  striking  resemblance  between  himself  and  John  Milton : 

"  You  imitate  his  airy  rapid  flights, 
And  mount  with  ardor  to  his  godlike  heights."8 

Another  poem,  extending  the  personal  comparison,  as- 
serts that  Byles, 

"  Harvard's  honor,  and  New  England's  hope, 
Bids  fair  to  rise  and  sing  and  rival  Pope."8 

Another  poem,  after  reciting  the  reproaches  that  had 
been  cast  upon  New  England  for  poetic  barrenness,  finds 
in  the  lofty  genius  of  Byles  the  prospect  of  New  England's 
speedy  vindication : 

"  At  length  our  [Byles]  aloft  transfers  his  name, 
And  binds  it  on  the  radiant  wings  of  fame."* 


Another  poem,  written  by  a  lady,  declares  that  a  certain 

"  pleased  goddess  triumphs  to  pronounce 
The  name  of  [Byles],  Pope,  Homer,  all  at  once."8 

Among  the  treasures  of  this  volume,  not  directly  refer 

1  "  A  Collection  of  Poems,"  etc.  3.  *  Ibid.  3.  *  Ibid   13. 

4  Ibid.  13.  In  examining  these  poems,  I  have  used  the  volume  that  be 
longed  first  to  Mather  Byles  himself,  then  to  his  daughter,  "  Th.  Byles,  given 
her  by  her  father,  Feb.  14,  1763,"  then  to  George  Ticknor,  then  to  Charles 
Deane,  and  finally  by  the  generosity  of  the  latter  to  the  Mass.  Hist.  Soc.  In 
some  passages  where  Byles  is  referred  to,  five  asterisks  are  given  instead  of 
the  letters  of  his  name  ;  but  in  the  volume  used  by  me,  his  name  is  wntte» 
over  these  asterisks,  apparently  by  himself. 

§  Ibid.  44. 


PIETAS  ET  GRATULATIO. 


57 


ring  to  Mather  Byles,  we  find  a  dulcet  and  platitudinous 
pastoral  introducing  our  well-remembered  friends,  "Be- 
linda," and  "  Strephon ;  "  also  "  circling  arms,"  "  surrender- 
ing charms,"  several "  swains,"  a  fair  assortment  of  "pangs," 
besides  one  "  yielding  fair,"  who  is  "  abandoned  to  de- 
spair," together  with  numerous  other  things  of  a  similar 
nature.  Here,  also,  are  a  couple  of  puerile  ballads  on  mili- 
tary events,  some  unusually  silly  nursery-rhymes,  and  even 
— so  low  does  the  book  descend — "  A  Commencement 
Ode."  Upon  the  other  hand,  there  are  a  very  few  pieces 
that  are  not  contemptible,  the  best  one  being  entitled 
"  The  Comet."  It  is  attributed  to  Mather  Byles  himself, 
and  is  in  his  usual  style  when  serious  and  eloquent. 

Peter  Oliver,  whose  name  in  our  civil  history  rests  un- 
der the  shadow  of  unpatriotic  subservience  to  the  English 
crown  in  the  great  struggle  of  the  Americans  for  their 
rights,  had  an  earlier  fame  among  us  of  a  gentler  and  pleas- 
anter  kind  ;  a  fame  procured  by  his  uncommon  talents  as 
a  writer.  He  was  born  in  1713,  was  graduated  at  Harvard 
in  1730,  and  settling  upon  his  estate  at  Middleborough, 
devoted  his  life  for  many  years  to  agriculture,  literature, 
and  politics.  The  most  satisfactory  token  that  remains  to 
us  of  his  gifts,  is  a  poem,  published  at  Boston  in  1757, 
in  honor  of  an  accomplished  and  noble-minded  colonial 
statesman,  Josiah  Willard,  who  had  died  at  an  advanced 
age  the  year  before.  The  poem,  though  clad  in  the  ortho- 
dox metrical  garb  of  the  day, — especially  having  some 
vestments  borrowed  from  the  wardrobes  of  Thomson  and 
of  Young, — has  likewise  a  strength  of  its  own,  an  individual 
spirit  not  quite  smothered  under  its  conventionalisms. 

XL 

King  George  the  Second  died  in  October,  1760;  and  the 
English  people,  who,  since  the  downfall  of  the  Stuarts, 
had  seen  upon  their  throne  an  almost  unbroken  succes- 
sion of  foreign  monarchs,  now  welcomed  with  universal 


58  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITER  A  TURE 

joy  the  accession  of  a  king  ofc^  England  who  was  also  •- 
native  of  England.  This  joy,  abundant  throughout  the 
three  kingdoms  both  in  noise  and  in  heartiness,  was,  in 
the  American  colonies  of  England,  certainly  not  less  hearty 
or  noisy  ;  and  among  many  other  forms  of  expression,  it 
uttered  itself  here  in  one  most  elaborate  and  most  sump- 
tuous literary  form.  The  oldest  college  in  America,  ob- 
serving that  the  English  universities  had  laid  before  his 
Majesty  "  their  poetical  oblations,"  conceived  the  idea  of 
conveying  to  the  king  its  own  loyal  emotion  in  the  same 
reputable  manner.  Accordingly,  there  was  a  strong  mus- 
ter to  the  undertaking,  of  all  the  available  culture  and 
genius  of  Harvard  College,  among  both  its  faculty  and  its 
graduates,  with  tiie  worthy  intent  of  producing  a  series 
of  poems  in  Latin,  Greek,  and  English,  that  should  be- 
wail the  exit  of  one  king  and  belaud  the  advent  of  another, 
and  at  the  same  time  represent  to  Europe  the  progress 
thus  far  made,  in  the  new  world,  in  the  most  elegant 
studies. 

Unfortunately,  the  inspiration  that  gives  birth  to  great 
poetry  does  not  often  come  from  its  vasty  deep  in  re- 
sponse to  the  call  of  any  sort  of  ceremonial  subpoena. 
Without  doubt,  this  planet  of  ours  bears  upon  it  at  pres- 
ent the  beautiful  burden  of  innumerous  volumes  of  official 
poetry, — tomes  throbbing  with  most  metrical  and  sonorous 
joy  and  sorrow,  carefully  compounded  in  deference  to  high 
command  ;  but  seldom  is  such  a  thing  as  "  Lycidas  "  to  be 
met  with  among  these  fabrications.  Let  us,  therefore, 
with  our  expectations  well  chastened,  draw  near  to  this 
noble  and  famous  quarto,  in  which  Harvard  College,  on  a 
fitting  occasion,  enshrined  its  very  filial  and  very  colonial 
grief  and  gladness ;  in  which,  likewise,  it  deposited  the 
evidence  of  the  mechanical  expertness  then  attained  in 
America  in  the  manufacture  of  books  and  of  poetry: 
"  Pietas  et  Gratulatio  Collegii  Cantabrigiensis  Apud  Nov- 
Anglos.  Bostoni-Massachusettensium.  Typis  J.  Green 
&  J.  Russell.— MDCCLXI." 


PI  ETAS  ET  GRATULATIO. 


59 


The  work  is  introduced  by  a  graceful  letter  in  prose, 
addressed  to  the  new  king,  and  signed  by  the  president 
and  fellows  of  Harvard.  It  makes  modest  reference  to 
the  remoteness  and  obscurity  of  the  college,  and  expresses 
great  loyalty  to  the  English  crown,  and  great  hope  re- 
specting the  generosity  and  justice  of  the  monarch  who 
had  just  begun  to  wear  it :  "Your  Majesty  is  raised  by 
heaven  to  provide  in  the  new  world  a  retreat  for  the 
wretched  inhabitants  of  the  old, — an  asylum  to  which 
they  may  retire  from  the  reach  of  war,  and  set  themselves 
down  in  peace,  sure  to  reap  the  fruits  of  industry,  secure 
in  the  enjoyment  of  their  civil  and  religious  liberties,  and 
exempt  from  the  miseries  which  distress  most  other  coun- 
tries." The  letter  does  not  altogether  omit  to  remind  his 
Majesty  of  the  propriety  of  some  "  royal  favor  and  patron- 
age" for  the  college;  it  utters  likewise  the  belief  that 
America  is  now  to  become  "  a  more  interesting  object  to 
Great  Britain  "  than  ever  before — a  belief  that  was  entirely 
justified  by  events ;  and  it  concludes  with  a  promise  on 
the  part  of  the  college  so  to  educate  its  pupils  "  that  they 
may  be  in  their  future  stations  grateful  as  well  as  useful 
subjects  to  the  best  of  kings" — a  promise  not  entirely 
justified  by  events. 

The  book  contains  one  hundred  and  six  pages  of  typog- 
raphy, which  is  exquisite  ;  and  thirty-one  pieces  of  poetry, 
the  exquisiteness  of  which  is  less  obvious.  Of  these 
poems,  three  are  in  Greek,  sixteen  in  Latin,  twelve  in  Eng- 
lish ;  all  the  writers  save  one — Sir  Francis  Bernard — being 
scholars  of  American  birth  and  training.1  Glancing,  first, 
at  the  poems  produced  in  the  ancient  languages,  we  find 
that  the  Greek  odes  show  a  fondness  for  Homeric  words 
and  forms;  that  they  are  Homeric  even  in  their  devia- 

1  Respecting  the  authorship  of  particular  pieces,  there  are  several  tradi- 
tions ;  but  as  these  traditions  are  conflicting,  I  have  not  here  mentioned  any 
of  them.  The  chief  value  of  the  book  is  in  its  aggregate  character  as  repre- 
senting the  most  advanced  stage  of  classical  and  literary  culture  reached  in 
America  in  the  colonial  time. 


60  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

tions  from  the  syntax  of  Attic  Greek ;  and  that  they  con- 
tain some  metrical  irregularities,  corresponding  to  those 
met  with  in  Sappho,  and  the  other  lyric  poets  belong- 
ing to  the  archaic  period  of  the  language.  Of  the  Latin 
odes,  the  classkal  purity  is  in  the  main  unexceptionable ; 
though  there  are  a  few  faulty  constructions,  besides  a 
tendency  to  use  certain  words  and  phrases  in  meanings 
unusual  in  classical  Latin,  together  with  a  habit  of  placing 
some  words  out  of  their  regular  positions  in  the  sentence.1 
As  regards  their  versification,  it  may  be  said  that  the 
hexameters  and  pentameters  have  no  positive  blemishes, 
unless  unmusical  lines  be  counted  as  such ;  but  that  in  the 
Alcaic  and  Sapphic  stanzas  there  are  a  few  notable  faults 
in  metre,  in  rhythm,  and  even  in  quantity.2 

Naturally,  our  principal  interest  is  in  the  English  poems 
of  the  book ;  and  we  note,  first  of  all,  the  entire  conform- 
ity of  the  writers  to  the  poetic  manner  then  prevalent  in 
England — a  dialect  fluent,  automatic,  insincere.  Making 
allowance  for  this  fault — a  venial  one — we  find  the  work, 
even  as  poetry,  in  some  respects  creditable ;  a  fact  all  the 
more  surprising,  since  the  incidents  that  called  this  poetry 
into  existence, — the  death  of  an  individual  like  George 
the  Second,  and  the  accession  of  another  individual  like 
George  the  Third, — are  incidents  supremely  unpoetic. 
Undoubtedly,  the  mourning  in  these  poems  is  official. 
Here  is  the  full,  round  chant  of  formal  laudation  and  cere- 
monious sorrow  ;  tears  that  flow  only  from  impossible  eyes, 
and  groans  that  no  one  utters  except  from  a  sense  of  duty, 
and  then  only  in  verse.  Compared  with  the  poetry  pro- 
duced in  England  with  reference  to  the  same  events,  very 
likely  this,  born  in  America,  was  especially  honest, — hav- 
ing, in  fact,  the  genuineness  of  feeling  that  comes  of  pro- 
vincial ignorance,  and  the  enchantment  about  monarchs 


1  For  example,  que  is  in  these  odes  out  of  its  regular  position  as  many  as 
ten  or  twelve  times. 
•  As  eiegantioris. 


PIE TAS  ET  GRA  TULA  770.  6 1 

that  is  one  of  the  many  advantages  of  being  at  a  distance 
from  them. 

In  celebrating  the  glory  of  the  dead  king,  his  American 
eulogists  point  to  the  material  prosperity  of  England  un- 
der his  reign : 

"  Commerce,  o'er  the  broad-backed  sea 
Extending  far  on  floating  isles, 
Imported  India's  wealth,  and  rich 
Peruvian  spoils."  ' 

But  the  death  of  George  the  Second  seems  to  these  in- 
genuous poets  to  be  an  event  so  vast  and  so  disastrous  as 
to  call  for  some  very  sympathetic  recognition  on  the  part 

of  Nature : 

"  thy  noontide  ray, 
Phoebus,  suspend;  ye  clouds,  obscure  the  day; 

Her  face  let  Cynthia  veil ; 

Thick  darkness  spread  her  wing, 

And  the  night-raven  sing; 
While  Tritons  their  sad  fate  bewail."' 

In  her  sorrow  at  the  death  of  George  the  Second,  Bri- 
tannia herself  is  observed  on  "  her  sea-girt  shore,"  "  with 
head  reclined": 

"  While  Melancholy  on  her  brow 

Sat  brooding,  with  her  raven  wing 

Shading  those  features  which  till  then 

With  majesty  unrivalled  shone."* 

And,  indeed,  all  these  pathetic  demonstrations  were 
most  appropriate  both  for  Nature  and  for  Britannia,  if  the 
dead  king  had  been  endowed  even  with  a  tithe  of  the 
personal  and  kingly  virtues  here  attributed  to  him.  It 
seems  to  be  conceded  by  these  New  England  bards  that 
there  were  indeed  a  few  great  heroes  and  great  kings  be- 
fore George  the  Second ;  and  yet  the  greatest  of  them, 
Caesar  and  Alexander,  are  mentioned,  only  to  give  em- 

1 "  Pieus  et  GratuUtio,"  14.  '  IbieL  17.  '  Ibid.  43. 


62  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

phasis  to  the  fact  that  they  are  quite  unworthy  of  being 
brought  into  comparison  with  the  one  English  king  and 
hero  lately  deceased : 

"  No  more  let  ancient  times  their  heroes  boast, 
Since  all  their  fame  in  George's  praise  is  lost; 
Not  Greece — her  Alexanders  ;  Caesars— Rome. 
For  worth  and  virtue,  view  our  monarch's  tomb. 
Restless  ambition  dwelt  in  Caesar's  mind; 
He  murdered  nations  and  enslaved  mankind, 
He  found  a  generous  people  great  and  free, 
And  gave  them  tyrants  for  their  liberty. 
The  glorious  Alexander,  half  divine, 
Whose  godlike  deeds  in  ancient  records  shine, 
Dropt  his  divinity  at  every  feast, 
And  lost  the  god  and  hero  in  the  beast. 
Shall,  then,  our  monarch  be  with  these  compared? 
Or  George's  glory  with  a  Caesar  shared  ? 
No — we  indignant  spurn  the  unworthy  claim  ; 
George  shines  unrivalled  in  the  lists  of  fame."1 

In  fact,  to  these  rapturous  American  poets  even  Death 
seems  rather  insolent  in  having  presumed  to  aim  his  dart 
at  such  a  king  as  George  the  Second : 

"  Insulting  victor  !  boast  this  trophy  won  ! 
That  your  broad  shade  hath  darkened  Britain's  sun  ; 
But,  know  !  such  kings  as  George  but  take  their  way 
Through  your  thick  darkness  to  immortal  day. 
Indulgent  Heaven  with  splendor  rayed  him  down 
To  swell  the  lustre  of  the  British  crown  ; 
But  virtues,  such  as  his,  are  not  confined 
To  small  domains  ;  they  encircle  all  mankind. 
Bourbons  to  humble,  Brunswicks  were  ordained  : 
Those  mankind's  rights  destroyed,  but  these  regained."1 

But  for  all  the  grief  consequent  upon  the  death  of  the 
king,  there  is  at  least  some  consolation  :  if  one  George  be 

1  "  Pietas  et  Gratulatio,"  21-22. 

*  Ibid,  ri-12.  It  is  amusing  to  remember  how,  a  very  few  years  after- 
ward, the  thought  expressed  in  the  last  couplet  was,  in  American  opinion, 
exactly  reversed. 


PIE TAS  ET  GRA  TULA  TIO.  63 

snatched  away,  Heaven  is  merciful  to  this  extent,  that 
another  George  remains : 

"  In  the  forehead  of  the  East 

See  the  gilded  morning  star — 

Of  glad  day  the  harbinger. 

Sighing,  now,  and  tears  are  ceased  : 

Still  George  survives  ;  his  virtues  shine 
In  him  who  sprung  alike  from  Brunswick's  royal  line."1 

Another  of  these  colonial  rhapsodists,  not  dreaming  of 
the  rough  blows  with  which  the  near  future  was  to  shatter 
all  these  illusions  of  transatlantic  fealty  to  the  Georges, 
exclaims : 

"  But  say,  my  muse,  say.  who  is  he 

The  scarcely  vacant  throne  who  fills? 
'Tis  he  !  the  heaven-inspired  youth  ! 

The  falling  purple  robe  who  caught. 
And  all  the  virtues  of  the  grandsire  claims  ; " ' 

while  still  another  poet  speaks  of  the  joy  with  which  the 
whole  British  empire  sees 

"  ascend  the  throne 
A  blooming  monarch  who  is  all  her  own."1 

No  one  who  duly  considers  this  magnificent  effusion  of 
provincial  gush  and  king-worship,  from  the  most  accom- 
plished gentlemen  in  America  in  1761, — this  premeditated 
and  ostentatious  torrent  of  adulatory  drivel  with  reference 
to  such  dull  fellows  as  the  Brunswicks, — will  ever  imagine 
that  our  war  for  independence  came  upon  us  a  moment 
too  soon  ;  indeed,  it  appears  to  have  been  as  necessary  for 
our  intellects,  as  it  was  for  our  liberties. 


1  M  Pictas  et  Gratulatio,"  18.  •  Ibid.  50.  •  Ibid.  24. 


CHAPTER  XII. 

NEW  ENGLAND  :  THE  DYNASTY  OF  THE  MATHERS. 

I. — The  founder  of  the  dynasty,  Richard  Mather — His  flight  from  England 
and  career  in  America — His  traits — His  writings — An  ecclesiastical  poli- 
tician— His  love  of  study. 

II. — Increase  Mather — His  American  birth  and  breeding — His  residence  in 
Ireland  and  England — Returns  to  New  England — His  great  influence 
there — Pulpit-orator,  statesman,  courtier,  college  president — His  learning 
— His  laboriousness  in  study — His  manner  in  the  pulpit — The  literary 
qualities  of  his  writings — Specimens — Number  and  range  of  his  published 
works — His  "  Illustrious  Providences  " — Origin  of  the  book — Its  value. 

III. — Cotton  Mather — His  preeminence — The  adulation  received  by  him — 
His  endowments — His  precocity — The  development  of  his  career — His 
religious  character  and  discipline — His  intellectual  accomplishments — 
His  habits  as  a  reader — The  brilliancy  of  his  talk — Contemporaneous  ad- 
miration— The  watchword  of  his  life — The  multitude  of  his  books — Char- 
acteristic titles — The  fame  of  his  "  Magnalia  " — His  anxieties  respecting 
its  publication — Its  scope — His  advantages  and  disadvantages  for  histori- 
cal writing — Estimate  of  the  historical  character  of  the  "  Magnalia  " — 
The  best  of  his  subsequent  writings — "  Bonifacius  " — "  Psalterium  Ameri- 
canum  " — "  Manuductio  ad  Ministerium  " — Its  counsels  to  a  young 
prophet — Study  of  Hebrew,  of  history,  of  natural  philosophy — Assault 
on  Aristotle — The  place  of  Cotton  Mather  in  American  literature — The 
last  of  the  Fantastics  in  prose — Traits  of  his  style — Pedantry — His  style 
not  agreeable  to  his  later  contemporaries — His  theory  of  style — Defence 
of  his  own  style  against  his  critics. 

IV.— Samuel  Mather— His  days  and  deeds — A  stanch  patriot — The  end  of 
the  dynasty. 


IN  the  year  1634,  the  Archbishop  of  York,  being  of  an 
honest  mind  to  snip  the  pestiferous  weeds  of  dissent  that 
were  then  sprouting  up  in  his  province,  sent  forth  his 
visitors  into  Lancashire,  for  the  prosecution  of  the  good 
work.  Straightway,  these  pleasant  gentlemen,  holding 
court  at  Wigan,  summoned  before  them  one  Richard 

64 


RICHARD  MATHER.  65 

Mather,  who  humbly  confessed  that  he  had  been  minister 
of  the  church  at  Toxteth  for  fifteen  years,  and  yet  had  never 
in  all  that  time  worn  a  surplice  ;  whereupon,  one  of  these 
reverend  visitors  "swore,  '  It  had  been  better  for  him  that 
He  had  begotten  seven  bastards.'  "  '  Not  having  any  such 
extenuating  achievements  to  plead  in  his  behalf,  the  poor 
parson,  much  against  his  will,  "  betook  himself  to  a  private 
life ; "  and  in  April,  of  the  following  year,  he  made  his 
way  stealthily,  and  in  disguise,  to  Bristol,  and  thence  got 
ship  for  Boston,  where  he  arrived  on  the  seventeenth  of 
August,  1635.  The  long  voyage  was  for  him  both  tedious 
and  perilous  ;  but  it  brought  to  him,  likewise,  its  compen- 
sations,— one  being  a  spectacle  that  forever  relieved  his 
mind  of  some  previous  carnal  embarrassment  in  connec- 
tion with  the  difficult  story  of  Jonah  :  "  In  the  afternoon 
we  saw  mighty  whales  spewing  up  water  in  the  air,  like 
the  smoke  of  a  chimney,  and  making  the  sea  about  them 
white  and  hoary,  as  it  is  said  in  Job ;  of  such  incredible 
bigness  that  I  will  never  wonder  that  the  body  of  Jonah 
could  be  in  the  belly  of  a  whale."  8 

At  the  time  of  his  arrival  in  Boston,  Richard  Mather 
was  thirty-nine  years  of  age ;  a  man  of  extensive  and  pre- 
cise learning  in  the  classics,  in  the  Scriptures,  and  in  di- 
vinity;  already  a  famous  preacher.  "His  voice,"  we  are 
told,  "  was  loud  and  big ;  and  uttered  with  a  deliberate 
vehemency,  it  procured  unto  his  ministry  an  awful  and 
very  taking  majesty."  a  It  was  of  him  that  the  illustri- 
ous Thomas  Hooker  had  said,  "  My  brother  Mather  is  a 
mighty  man."4  No  wonder  that, upon  the  arrival  in  New 
England  of  this  same  mighty  man,  together  with  his  loud 
and  big  voice,  there  was  among  the  churches  some  broth- 
erly strife  for  the  possession  of  him.  Dorchester,  as  it 
chanced,  was  the  fortunate  church  ;  for,  in  1636,  he  ac- 


1  "  Magnalia,"  I.  448.  *  "  Magnolia,"  I.  452. 

1  Young.  "Chron.  Mass.  Bay,"  465.  *  Ibid. 

VOL.  II.— 6 


66  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

cepted  its  call,  and  in  its  service  he  abode,  until  April  the 
twenty-second,  1669,  when  "  he  quietly  breathed  forth 
his  last ;  after  he  had  been  about  seventy-three  years  a 
citizen  of  the  world,  and  fifty  years  a  minister  in  the 
church  of  God."1 

This  man,  "  the  progenitor  of  all  the  Mathers  in  New 
England,"2  and  the  first  of  a  line  of  great  preachers  and 
great  men  of  letters  that  continued  to  hold  sway  there 
through  the  entire  colonial  era,  had  in  himself  the  chief 
traits  that  distinguished  his  family  through  so  long  a 
period; — great  physical  endurance,  a  voracious  appetite 
for  the  reading  of  books,  an  alarming  propensity  to  the 
writing  of  books,  a  love  of  political  leadership  in  church 
and  state,  the  faculty  of  personal  conspicuousness,  finally, 
the  homiletic  gift. 

His  numerous  writings  were,  of  course,  according  to 
the  demand  of  his  time  and  neighborhood  ; — sermons,  a 
catechism,  a  treatise  on  justification,  public  letters  upon 
church  government,  several  controversial  documents,  the 
preface  to  the  Old  Bay  Psalm  Book,  and  many  of  the 
marvels  of  metrical  expression  to  be  viewed  in  the  body  of 
that  work.3 

In  recognition  of  his  prominence  and  power  in  ecclesi- 
astical politics,  one  of  his  contemporaries  wrote  this  epi- 
taph for  him:  "  Vixerat  in  synodis,  moritur  moderator 
in  illis."4  Yet,  as  was  the  case  with  each  of  his  famous 
descendants,  his  true  life  seemed  to  be  among  his  books  ; 
and  he  did  his  share  to  create  the  tradition  of  heroic 
studiousness  attaching  to  the  clergy  of  colonial  New  Eng- 
land. On  "the  morning  before  he  died,  he  importuned 
the  friends  that  watched  with  him,  to  help  him  into  the 
room  where  he  thought  his  usual  works  and  books  ex- 
pected him.  To  satisfy  his  importunity,  they  began  ta 

1  "  Magnalia,"  I.  456. 

1  Young,  "  Chron.  Mass.  Bay,"  480,  note. 

8  A  list  of  his  writings  in  W.  B.  Sprague,  "  Annals  of  Am.  Pulpit,"  I.  78-79, 

4  John  Eliot,  "  Biograph.  Diet."  306. 


INCREASE  MATHER.  fy 

iead  him  thither  ;  but  finding  himself  unable  to  get  out  of 
his  lodging-room,  he  said,  '  I  see  I  am  not  able.  I  have 
not  been  in  my  study  several  days ;  and  is  it  not  a  lament- 
able thing  that  I  should  lose  so  much  time  ? '  " l 

This  dying  speech  of  the  first  of  the  Mathers  was,  in  its 
spirit,  the  living  speech  of  all  the  rest  of  them,  for  more 
than  a  hundred  years.  Above  all  other  things,  they  were 
a  bookish  clan.  To  them,  that  moment  seemed  lost,  in 
which,  if  not  publicly  preaching  or  privately  plotting,  they 
were  not  either  reading  a  book,  or  writing  one. 


II. 

Of  the  six  sons  of  Richard  Mather,  four  became  famous 
preachers,  two  of  them  in  Ireland  and  in  England,  other 
two  in  New  England  ;  the  greatest  of  them  all  being  the 
youngest,  born  at  Dorchester,  June  twenty-first,  1639,  and 
at  his  birth  adorned  with  the  name  of  Increase,  in  grateful 
recognition  of  "  the  increase  of  every  sort,  wherewith  God 
favored  the  country  about  the  time  of  his  nativity."  * 

Even  in  childhood  he  began  to  display  the  strong  and 
eager  traits  that  gave  distinction  and  power  to  his  whole 
life,  and  that  bore  him  impetuously  through  the  warfare 
of  eighty-four  mortal  years.  At  twelve,  he  entered  Har- 
vard College,  taking  his  Bachelor's  degree  at  seventeen. 
His  Latin  oration,  at  Commencement,  was  so  vigorous  an 
assault  upon  the  philosophy  of  Aristotle,  that  President 
Chauncey  would  have  stopped  him,  had  not  the  Cam- 
bridge pastor,  Jonathan  Mitchell — a  man  of  great  author- 
ity— cried  out  in  intercession,  "  Pergat,  quaeso,  nam  doc- 
tissime  disputat."  In  1657,  on  his  nineteenth  birthday, 
he  preached  in  his  father's  pulpit  his  first  sermon, — a  ser- 
mon so  able  in  matter  and  in  manner,  that  it  greatly  added 
to  the  general  belief  that  here  was  a  youth  from  whom  more 
was  to  be  heard  by  and  by.  Twelve  days  afterward,  he 

1  "  Magnalia,"  I.  453.  *  C.  Mather,  "  Parentator,"  1-5. 


68  HISTORY   OF  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

sailed  for  Dublin,  where  his  eldest  brother,  Samuel,  was  a 
noted  preacher,  and  where,  entering  himself  as  a  student 
of  Trinity  College,  he  took,  with  high  reputation,  his  Mas- 
ter's degree  in  the  following  year, — declining  a  fellowship. 
During  the  subsequent  three  years,  he  exercised  his  talents 
as  a  preacher,  with  great  effect,  in  various  parts  of  England 
and  in  Guernsey  ;  and  in  1661,  not  deeming  the  outlook 
an  agreeable  one,  just  then,  for  dissenters  in  the  mother- 
country,  he  abandoned  his  purpose  of  making  a  career 
there,  and  returned  to  his  native  land. 

At  once,  invitations  poured  ia  upon  him  from  "  as  many 
places  as  there  are  signs  for  the  sun  in  the  Zodiac."  De- 
clining to  be  settled  anywhere  in  haste,  he  divided  his 
services  between  his  father's  church  at  Dorchester  and  the 
North  Church  of  Boston ;  and  at  last,  in  May,  1664,  he 
consented  to  be  made  minister  of  the  latter  church,  which, 
thenceforward,  to  the  end  of  his  own  life,  and  to  the  end 
of  the  life  of  his  more  famous  son,  continued  to  be  the 
tower  and  the  stronghold  of  the  Mathers  in  America. 

Thus,  before  his  twenty-sixth  birthday,  Increase  Mather 
had  found  the  place  of  his  work  for  life, — a  prominent 
pulpit  in  the  chief  town  of  the  New  England  theocracy. 
There,  wielding  the  most  tremendous  weapon  of  influence 
known  in  such  a  community,  he  continued  to  fulminate, 
to  the  delight  of  his  adherents,  to  the  great  terror  of  his 
foes,  for  almost  sixty  years  ;  and  by  force  of  his  learning, 
his  logic,  his  sense,  his  eloquence,  his  tireless  energy,  his 
adroitness  in  intrigue,  his  sagacity  and  audacity  in  partisan 
command,  he  became,  during  the  first  thirty  years  of  that 
time,  the  most  powerful  man  in  all  that  part  of  the  world. 
In  the  desperate  conflict  in  which  Massachusetts  con- 
tended with  James  the  Second  for  its  own  existence,  In- 
crease Mather  was  a  potent  counsellor  of  the  people ;  and 
for  several  years,  as  the  representative  of  his  colony  at  the 
court  '  f  James,  and  of  William  and  Mary,  the  Boston  pas- 
tor pr  -d  himself  an  able  and  successful  diplomate.  For 
sixte<  'cars,  also,  he  filled  the  high  office  of  president  of 


INCREASE  MATHER.  69 

Harvard  College,  without  ceasing  to  be  pastor  of  North 
Church.  From  about  1694  and  until  his  death  in  1723,  his 
political  prestige,  even  his  ecclesiastical  prestige,  greatly 
declined  ;  ygt  to  the  last,  he  was  a  sovereign  man  through- 
out New  England,  illustrious  for  great  talents  and  great 
services,  both  at  home  and  abroad. 

Here,  then,  was  a  person,  born  in  America,  bred  in 
America, — a  clean  specimen  of  what  America  could  do 
for  itself  in  the  way  of  keeping  up  the  brave  stock  of  its 
first  imported  citizens ;  a  man  every  way  capable  of  filling 
any  place  in  public  leadership  made  vacant  by  the  greatest 
of  the  Fathers;  probably  not  a  whit  behind  the  best  of 
them  in  scholarship,  in  eloquence,  in  breadth  of  view,  in 
knowledge  of  affairs,  in  every  sort  of  efficiency. 

As  to  learning,  it  has  been  said  l  that  he  even  exceeded 
all  other  New-Englanders  of  the  colonial  time,  except  his 
own  son,  Cotton.  On  the  day  when  he  was  graduated 
at  our  little  rustic  university,  he  had  the  accomplishments 
usual  among  the  best  scholars  of  the  best  universities  of 
the  old  world  ;  he  could  converse  fluently  in  Latin,  and 
could  read  and  write  Hebrew  and  Greek;  and  his  num- 
berless publications  in  after  life  bear  marks  of  a  range  of 
learned  reading  that  widened  as  he  went  on  in  years,  and 
drew  into  its  hospitable  gulf  some  portions  of  nearly  all 
literatures,  especially  the  most  obscure  and  uncouth. 

His  habits  as  a  student  were  those  of  the  mighty  theo- 
logians and  pulpit-orators  among  whom  he  grew  up.  He 
had  the  appalling  capacity  of  working  in  his  study  sixteen 
hours  a  day.  One  now  contemplates  with  a  mixture  of 
admiration  and  horror — alleviated  by  incredulity — the  pic- 
ture that  has  been  left  us  by  filial  hands,  of  one  of  this 
man's  ordinary  working-days :  "  In  the  morning,  repairing 
to  his  study  (where  his  custom  was  to  sit  up  very  late, 
even  until  midnight  and  perhaps  after  it)  he  deliberately 
read  a  chapter,  and  made  a  prayer,  and  then  plied  what 

1  By  Enoch  Pond,  "  Life  of  I.  Mather,"  142. 


70  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

of  reading  and  writing  he  had  before  him.  At  nine  o'clock, 
he  came  down  and  read  a  chapter,  and  made  a  prayer  with 
his  family.  He  then  returned  unto  the  work  of  the  study. 
Coming  down  to  dinner,  he  quickly  went  up  again,  and  be- 
gun the  afternoon  with  another  prayer.  There  he  went  on 
with  the  work  of  the  study  till  the  evening.  Then  with 
another  prayer  he  again  went  unto  his  Father;  after  which 
he  did  more  at  the  work  of  the  study.  At  nine  o'clock,  he 
came  down  to  his  family  sacrifices.  Then  he  went  up 
again  to  the  work  of  the  study,  which  anon  he  concluded 
with  another  prayer ;  and  so  he  betook  himself  unto  his  re- 
pose." l 

His  power  as  a  pulpit-orator  was  very  great,  and  it  was 
bought  at  a  great  price.  On  Monday  morning  he  began 
his  sermons  for  the  next  Sunday,  and  continued  to  work 
upon  them  diligently  until  Friday  night ;  on  Saturday 
he  committed  them  to  memory.  Of  course,  on  Sunday, 
armed  thus  at  every  point,  he  could  march  into  his  pulpit 
with  confident  tread.  Using  no  manuscript,  he  spoke 
without  hesitation,  "  with  a  grave  and  wise  deliberation," 
often  with  impassioned  vehemence.  He  had,  like  his 
father,  a  commanding  voice ;  and  he  used  it  with  great  ef- 
fect, at  times,  indeed,  "  with  such  a  tonitruous  cogency 
that  the  hearers  would  be  struck  with  an  awe,  like  what 
would  be  produced  on  the  fall  of  thunderbolts."  2  It  was 
a  common  saying  of  his  contemporaries,  that  Increase 
Mather  was  "a  complete  preacher." 

From  a  literary  point  of  view,  his  writings  certainly  have 
considerable  merit.  His  style  is  far  better  than  that  of 
his  son, — simpler,  more  terse,  more  sinewy  and  direct,  less 
bedraggled  in  the  dust  of  pedantry ;  it  has  remarkable  en- 
ergy; in  many  places  it  is  so  modern  in  tone  that  it  would 
not  seem  strange  in  any  pulpit  now,  except  for  the  numer- 
ous quotations  from  Scripture,  as  well  as  for  an  occasional 
use  of  some  Latin  or  Greek  or  Hebrew  phrase.  Thus,  de- 


C.  Mather,  "  Parenlator,"  181.  *  Ibid.  2l6. 


INCREASE  MATHER.  7! 

picting  the  victory  of  Christ  over  the  Devil,  the  preacher 
exclaims:  "He  has  led  captivity  captive.  He  has  dis- 
armed the  Devil  and  all  his  angels,  and,  as  it  were,  tied  them 
to  his  triumphal  chariot,  and  exposed  them  openly  in  the 
sight  of  heaven  and  earth."1  The  worth  of  a  human  soul 
— that  enticing  and  ineffable  theme  of  pulpit-rhetoric  in 
every  age — he  proclaims  in  this  pithy  and  vivid  manner : 
"One  soul  is  of  more  worth  than  all  the  world.  .  .  .  Every 
man  has  ...  a  body  that  must  die,  and  shall  die,  and  a 
soul  that  shall  never  die.  To  save  such  a  soul  is  a  might- 
ier thing  than  to  save  all  the  bodies  in  the  world."  8  In 
the  battle  of  life,  here  upon  the  earth,  we  are  not  engaged, 
he  tells  us,  in  an  obscure  field,  or  unwatched  by  throngs  of 
spectators  :  "  Let  us  always  remember  what  eyes  are  upon 
us.  There  are  glorious  eyes,  which,  though  we  see  not 
them,  are  observing  us  in  all  our  motions.  The  eyes  of 
holy  angels  are  upon  us.  ...  And  the  eyes  of  Jesus  Christ, 
the  Son  of  God,  behold  us.  ...  And  the  eyes  of  God  be- 
hold us.  ...  It  is  reported  of  a  faithful  minister  of  Christ, 
that  there  was  written  on  the  walls  of  his  study,  '  Deus 
videt,  angeli  adstant,  conscientia  testabitur,' — God  seeth 
thee,  angels  are  by  thee,  thy  own  conscience  will  be  a  wit- 
ness how  thou  dost  behave  thyself."8  Sometimes,  he  casts 
his  thought  into  an  illustration  so  luminous  and  so  shrewd 
that  it  makes  further  argument  unnecessary;  as  when  he 
says  of  the  government  of  Massachusetts  under  Sir  Ed- 
mund Andros :  "  The  Foxes  were  now  made  the  adminis- 
trators of  justice  to  the  Poultry." 

The  publications  of  Increase  Mather  defy  mention,  ex- 
cept in  the  form  of  a  catalogue.  From  the  year  1669, 
when  he  had  reached  the  age  of  thirty,  until  the  year  1723, 
when  he  died,  hardly  a  twelvemonth  was  permitted  to  pass 
in  which  he  did  not  solicit  the  public  attention  through  the 
press.  An  authentic  list  of  his  works  would  include  at 


1  "Several  Sermons,"  13.  J  Ibid.  13-14. 

1  Sermon  on  death  of  Rev.  John  Baily,  6-7. 


72  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

least  ninety-two  titles.1  The  most  of  these  works  are  ser- 
mons ;  but  as  sermons,  they  sweep  the  entire  circuit  of 
themes,  sacred  and  secular,  on  which  men  employed  their 
thoughts  in  those  days, — divinity,  ethics,  casuistry,  church 
government,  law,  English  and  American  politics,  history, 
prophecy,  demonology,  angelology,  crime,  poverty,  ignor- 
ance, dancing,  the  Indian  question,  earthquakes,  comets, 
winds,  conflagrations,  drunkenness,  and  the  small-pox. 

Of  all  the  great  host  of  Increase  Mather's  publications, 
perhaps  only  one  can  be  said  to  have  still  any  power  of 
walking  alive  on  the  earth, — the  book  commonly  known 
by  a  name  not  given  to  it  by  the  author,  "  Remarkable 
Providences."  The  origin  of  this  book  is  worth  mention. 
As  early  as  1658,  a  number  of  Puritan  ministers  in  Eng- 
land and  in  Ireland  combined  to  put  on  record,  and  finally 
to  publish,  authentic  accounts  of  extraordinary  interposi- 
tions of  Providence  in  recent  human  affairs.  After  some 
progress  had  been  made  in  the  work,  it  was  dropped.  Sub- 
sequently, the  manuscript  was  sent  to  New  England,  prob- 
ably by  Milton's  friend,  Samuel  Hartlib.  For  many  years 
it  lay  in  obscurity  in  Boston,  until,  by  good  fortune,  it  fell 
into  the  energetic  hands  of  Increase  Mather.  The  plan 
was  exactly  suited  to  a  mind  like  his;  and  after  communi- 
cating it  to  his  clerical  brethren,  and  receiving  their  cordial 
encouragement  to  go  on  with  it,  he  sent  forth  proposals 
through  New  England,  calling  upon  ministers  and  other 
reputable  persons  to  forward  to  him  written  narratives  of 
Providential  events  that  had  occurred  under  their  own  ob- 
servation. In  1684,  the  book  was  published,  under  the 
title  of  "An  Essay  for  the  Recording  of  Illustrious  Provi- 
dences." *  Thus  the  work  is  simply  a  compilation  of  an- 
ecdotes sent  to  the  editor,  or  culled  by  him  from  his  own 
observation  and  from  books,  the  whole  being  plentifully 


1  One  list  is  given  in  W.  B.   Sprague,  "Annals  of  Am.  Pulpit,"  I.  156- 
157  ;  another  and  better  list  in  J.  L.  Sibley,  "  Harv.  Grad."  I.  438-463. 
8  Reprinted,  London,  1856. 


COTTOX  MATHER. 


73 


decorated  with  comments  and  speculations  of  his  own. 
The  materials  are  classified  under  these  topics  :  "  remark- 
able sea-deliverances;"  "some  other  remarkable  preser 
vations;"  "remarkables  about  thunder  and  lightning;" 
"things  preternatural  which  have  happened  in  New  Eng- 
land ;  "  "  demons  and  possessed  persons ;  "  "  apparitions ; " 
"  deaf  and  dumb  persons ;  "  remarkable  tempests,  earth- 
quakes, and  floods  in  New  England;  remarkable  judgments 
upon  Quakers,  drunkards,  and  enemies  of  the  church; 
finally,"  some  remarkables  at  Norwich  in  New  England." 
It  cannot  be  denied  that  the  conception  of  the  book  is 
thoroughly  scientific ;  for  it  is  to  prove  by  induction  the 
actual  presence  of  supernatural  forces  in  the  world.  Its 
chief  defect,  of  course,  is  its  lack  of  all  cross-examination 
of  the  witnesses,  and  of  all  critical  inspection  of  their  testi- 
mony, together  with  a  palpable  eagerness  on  the  author's 
part  to  welcome,  from  any  quarter  of  the  earth  or  sea  or 
sky,  any  messenger  whatever,  who  may  be  seen  hurrying 
toward  Boston  with  his  mouth  full  of  marvels.  The  narra- 
tives, often  vividly  told,  are  tragic,  or  amusing,  or  disgust- 
ing, now  and  then  merely  stupid  ;  in  several  particulars 
they  anticipate  the  phenomena  of  modern  spiritualism ; 
while  the  philosophical  disquisitions  of  the  author  are  at 
once  a  laughable  and  an  instructive  memorial  of  the  mental 
habits  of  very  orthodox  and  very  enlightened  people  in 
Protestant  Christendom,  in  the  seventeenth  century. 


III. 

In  the  intellectual  distinction  of  the  Mather  family, 
there  seemed  to  be,  for  at  least  three  generations,  a  cer- 
tain cumulative  felicity.  The  general  acknowledgment  of 
this  fact  is  recorded  in  an  old  epitaph,  composed  for  the 
founder  of  the  illustrious  tribe  : 

"  Under  this  stone  lies  Richard  Mather, 
Who  had  a  son  greater  than  his  father, 
And  eke  a  grandson  greater  than  either." 


74  HISTORY  OF  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

This  overtopping  grandson  was,  of  course,  none  other 
than  Cotton  Mather,  the  literary  behemoth  of  New  Eng- 
land in  our  colonial  era  ;  the  man  whose  fame  as  a  writer 
surpasses,  in  later  times  and  especially  in  foreign  countries, 
that  of  any  other  pre-Revolutionary  American,  excepting 
Jonathan  Edwards  and  Benjamin  Franklin. 

The  twelfth  of  February,  1663,  was  the  happy  day  on 
which  he  was  bestowed  upon  the  world, — the  eldest  of  a 
family  of  ten  children,  his  mother  being  the  only  daughter 
of  the  celebrated  pulpit-orator,  John  Cotton.  In  himself, 
therefore,  the  forces  and  graces  of  two  ancestral  lines  re- 
nowned for  force  and  for  grace,  seemed  to  meet  and  cul- 
minate. 

From  his  earliest  childhood,  and  through  all  his  days, 
he  was  gazed  at  and  belauded  by  his  immediate  associ- 
ates, as  a  being  of  almost  supernatural  genius,  and  of 
quite  indescribable  godliness.  That  his  nature  early  be- 
came saturated  with  self-consciousness,  and  that  he  grew 
to  be  a  vast  literary  and  religious  coxcomb,  is  a  thing  not 
likely  to  astonish  any  one  who  duly  considers,  first,  the 
strong  original  aptitude  of  the  man  in  that  direction,  and, 
secondly,  the  manner  of  his  mortal  life  from  the  cradle 
to  the  grave, — the  idol  of  a  distinguished  family,  the 
prodigy  both  of  school  and  of  college,  the  oracle  of  a 
rich  parish,  the  pet  and  demi-god  of  an  endless  series  of 
sewing-societies. 

It  may  be  said  of  Cotton  Mather,  that  he  was  born 
with  an  enormous  memory,  an  enormous  appetite  for 
every  species  of  knowledge,  an  enormous  zeal  and  power 
for  work,  an  enormous  passion  for  praise.  At  his  birth, 
also,  he  came  into  a  household  of  books  and  of  students. 
The  first  breath  he  drew  was  air  charged  with  erudition. 
His  toys  and  his  playmates  were  books.  The  dialect  of 
his  childhood  was  the  ponderous  phraseology  of  philoso- 
phers and  divines.  To  be  a  scholar  was  a  part  of  the 
family  inheritance.  At  eleven  years  of  age,  he  was  a 
freshman  in  Harvard  College  ;  having,  however,  before 


COTTON  MATHER. 


75 


ihat  time,  read  Homer  and  Isocrates,  and  many  unusual 
Latin  authors,  and  having,  likewise,  entered  upon  the 
congenial  employment  of  exhorting  his  juvenile  friends  to 
lives  of  godliness,  and  even  of  writing  "  poems  of  devo- 
tion "  for  their  private  use.  At  fifteen,  on  taking  his  first 
degree,  he  had  the  pleasure  of  hearing  the  president  of 
the  college  address  to  him,  by  name,  in  the  presence  of 
the  great  throng  at  commencement,  a  glowing  compli- 
ment,— admirably  constructed  to  ripen  in  this  precocious 
and  decidedly  priggish  young  gentleman  his  already  well- 
developed  sense  of  his  own  importance.  At  eighteen, 
on  taking  his  second  degree,  he  delivered  a  learned  and 
persuasive  thesis,  on  "  the  divine  origin  of  the  Hebrew 
points." 

One  year  before  the  event  last  mentioned,  he  began  to 
preach.  Being  oppressed  by  a  grievous  habit  of  stammer- 
ing, he  was  on  the  point  of  abandoning  the  ministry  for 
the  medical  profession,  when  "  that  good  old  school-mas- 
ter, Mr.  Corlet,"  told  him  that  he  could  cure  himself  of  his 
trouble,  if  he  would  but  remember  always  to  speak  "  with 
a  dilated  deliberation."  He  adopted  the  suggestion,  and 
was  cured.1  At  the  age  of  twenty-two,  he  was  made  an 
associate  of  his  father  in  the  pastorship  of  North  Church, 
Boston.  There,  in  the  pauseless  prosecution  of  almost 
incredible  labors,  literary,  philanthropic,  oratorical,  and 
social,  he  continued  to  the  end  of  his  days  on  earth.  He 
departed  this  life  in  1728,  having  been  permitted  to  con- 
template, for  many  years  and  with  immense  delight,  the 
progress  of  his  own  fame,  as  it  reverberated  through  Chris- 
tendom. 

Upon  the  whole,  the  picture  of  Cotton  Mather,  given  to 
us  in  his  own  writings,  and  in  the  writings  of  those  who 
knew  him  and  loved  him,  is  one  of  surpassing  painfulness. 
We  see  a  person  whose  intellectual  endowments  were  quite 
remarkable,  but  inflated  and  perverted  by  egotism ;  him- 

1  S.  Mather,  "Life  of  C.  Mather,"  26. 


76 


HISTORY   OF  AMERICAN   LITERA7URE. 


self  imposed  upon  by  his  own  moral  affectations ;  com- 
pletely surrendered  to  spiritual  artifice ;  stretched,  every 
instant  of  his  life,  on  the  rack  of  ostentatious  exertion, 
intellectual  and  religious,  and  all  this  partly  for  vanity's 
sake,  partly  for  conscience'  sake — in  deference  to  a  dread- 
ful system  of  ascetic  and  pharisaic  formalism,  in  which 
his  nature  was  hopelessly  enmeshed. 

In  his  fourteenth  year,  he  began  the  habit  of  frequent 
fasts  and  vigils,  to  which  he  attached  a  superstitious  im- 
portance, and  which  he  kept  up  with  increasing  intensity 
to  the  end  of  his  life.  He  desired  "  to  resemble  a  rabbi 
mentioned  in  the  Talmud,  whose  face  was  black  by  reason 
of  his  fastings  ;  "  1  and  it  was  computed  that,  in  the  course 
of  his  life,  the  number  of  his  special  fast-days  amounted 
to  four  hundred  and  fifty.2  Once,  in  his  old  age,  he  ab- 
stained from  all  food  three  days  together,  and  spent  the 
time,  as  he  expressed  it,  "  in  knocking  at  the  door  of 
heaven." 

Moreover,  he  prescribed  to  himself  a  scheme  of  minute 
rules  for  the  association  of  devout  thoughts  with  every  oc- 
currence of  the  day  or  the  night :  "  When  he  heard  a  clock 
strike,  he  could  not  help  thinking  and  wishing  that  he 
might  so  number  his  days  as  to  apply  his  heart  to  wis- 
dom." "  When  he  knocked  at  a  door,  the  faith  of  our 
Saviour's  promise  was  awakened  in  him — '  Knock  and  it 
shall  be  opened  unto  you.'  "  "  When  he  mended  his  fire, 
it  was  with  a  meditation  how  his  heart  and  life  might  be 
rectified,  and  how,  through  the  emendations  of  divine 
grace,  his  love  and  zeal  might  flame  more  agreeably." 
"  When  he  put  out  his  candle,  it  must  be  done  with  an  ad- 
dress to  the  Father  of  Lights,  that  his  light  might  not  be 
put  out  in  obscure  darkness."  "  In  drinking  a  dish  of  tea 
— of  which  he  was  a  great  admirer — he  would  take  occa- 
sion for  these  thoughts,  .  .  .  that  should  have  many  sweet 


1  W.  B.  O.  Peabody,  "  Life  of  C.  Mather,"  176. 
4  S.  Mather.  "Life  of  C.  Mather,"  no. 


COTTON  MATHER. 


77 


acknowledgments  of  the  glorious  Jesus  in  them.  And 
whatever  delight  any  of  his  senses  took,  it  was  soon  sancti- 
fied and  rendered  more  delightful,  by  his  making  such  an 
improvement  of  it."  "  When  the  Doctor  waked  in  the 
night,  he  would  impose  it  as  a  law  upon  himself,  ever,  be- 
fore he  fell  asleep  again,  to  bring  some  glory  of  his  Saviour 
into  his  meditations,  and  have  some  agreeable  desire  of 
his  soul  upon  it."  "  When  he  washed  his  hands,  he  must 
think  of  the  clean  hands,  as  well  as  pure  heart,  which  be- 
long to  the  citizens  of  Zion."  "  And  when  he  did  so  mean 
an  action  as  paring  his  nails,  he  thought  how  he  might 
lay  aside  all  superfluity  of  naughtiness."  "  He  had  many 
years  a  morning  cough  ;  it  every  morning  '  raised  '  proper 
dispositions  of  piety  in  him."  "  Upon  the  sight  of  a  tall 
man,  he  said,  '  Lord,  give  that  man  high  attainments  in 
Christianity  ;  let  him  fear  God  above  many : '  a  negro, 
'  Lord,  wash  that  poor  soul ;  make  him  white  by  the  wash- 
ing of  thy  Spirit:'  a  man  going  by  without  observing 
him, '  Lord,  I  pray  thee  help  that  man  to  take  a  due  notice 
of  Christ.'  " l  In  his  early  days,  Cotton  Mather  was  a 
great  sufferer  from  toothache ;  and,  of  course,  "  in  these 
pains,"  instead  of  inferring  that  some  of  his  teeth  were 
decayed  and  needed  to  be  pulled  out,  "  he  would  set  him- 
self, as  well  as  he  could,  to  try  his  ways.  He  considered 
whether  or  no  he  had  not  sinned  with  his  teeth.  How? 
By  sinful  and  excessive  eating ;  and  by  evil  speeches,  for 
there  are  '  literae  dentales  '  used  in  them."2  One  would 
like  to  suppose  that,  at  least  in  the  matter  of  love  and 
marriage,  Cotton  Mather  gave  himself  some  slight  release 
from  these  fanatic  pedantries.  Not  so ;  for  we  read  that 
"  he  thought  it  advisable  in  his  twenty-fourth  year  to 
marry.  He  first  looked  up  to  Heaven  for  direction,  and 
heard  the  counsel  of  his  friends.  The  person  he  first 
pitched  upon,  was"8  —  the  one  who  had  the  honor  of 


1  S.  Mather,  "  Life  of  C.  Mather,"  101  et  seq. 

*  Ibid.  61.  *  Ibid.  12. 


78  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITER  A  TURE. 

marching  for  a  few  years  at  the  head  of  his  procession  o( 
three  wives. 

If,  now,  we  may  be  permitted  to  stand,  for  some  mo- 
ments, in  the  presence  of  this  great  man,  and  to  make  a 
study  of  his  literary  significance  in  our  annals,  it  is  very 
likely  that  we  shall  be  impressed,  first  of  all,  even  as  his 
contemporaries  were,  by  his  vast  industry,  the  variety  of 
his  acquisitions,  and  his  almost  illimitable  prolificacy. 

At  the  age  of  sixteen,  he  had  drawn  up  for  himself  sys- 
tems of  all  the  sciences.  Besides  the  ancient  languages, 
Hebrew,  Latin,  Greek,  which  he  used  with  facility,  he 
knew  French,  Spanish,  and  even  one  of  the  Indian  tongues, 
and  prided  himself  on  having  composed  and  published 
works  in  most  of  them.  It  was  his  ambition  to  be  ac- 
quainted with  all  branches  of  knowledge,  with  all  spheres 
of  thought ;  to  get  sight  of  all  books.  His  library  was 
the  largest  private  collection  on  the  American  continent. 
They  who  called  upon  him  in  his  study,  were  instructed 
by  this  legend  written  in  capitals  above  the  door:  "Be 
Short."  He  had  no  time  to  waste.  He  was  always  at 
work.  They  who  beheld  him  marvelled  at  his  power  of 
dispatching  most  books  at  a  glance,  and  yet  of  possessing 
all  that  was  in  them.  "  He  would  ride  post  through  an 
author."1  "  He  pencilled  as  he  went  along,  and  at  the  end 
reduced  the  substance  to  his  commonplaces,  to  be  re- 
viewed at  leisure;  and  all  this  with  wonderful  celerity."2 
The  results  of  all  his  omnivorous  readings  were  at  per- 
fect command  ;  his  talk  overflowed  with  learning  and  wit  : 
"he  seemed  to  have  an  inexhaustible  source  of  divine 
flame  and  vigor.  .  .  .  How  instructive,  learned,  pious, 
and  engaging  was  he  in  his  private  converse ;  superior 
company  for  the  greatest  of  men.  .  .  .  How  agreeably 
tempered  with  a  various  mixture  of  wit  and  cheerful- 
ness." 8  The  readers  of  his  books  may,  indeed,  infer  from 

1  S.  Mather,  "Life  of  C.  Mather,"  68. 

4  T.  Prince,  Pref.  to  "  Life  of  C.  Mather,"  by  S.  Mather. 

*  T.  Prince,  Sermon  on  Death  of  C.  Mather,  20-21. 


COTTON  MATHER. 


79 


them  something  of  his  splendid  powers  of  intellect ;  but 
they  cannot  "  imagine  that  extraordinary  lustre  of  pious 
and  useful  literature,  wherewith  we  were  every  day  enter- 
tained, surprised,  and  satisfied,  who  dwelt  in  the  directer 
rays,  in  the  more  immediate  vision."1  The  people  in  daily 
association  with  him  were,  indeed,  constantly  amazed  at 
"  the  capacity  of  his  mind,  the  readiness  of  his  wit,  the 
vastness  of  his  reading,  the  strength  of  his  memory,  .  .  . 
the  tenor  of  a  most  entertaining  and  profitable  conversa- 
tion." 3 

On  his  death-bed,  he  gave  to  his  son,  Samuel,  this  final 
charge :  "  Remember  only  that  one  word — '  Fructuosus.'  "8 
It  seemed  the  hereditary  motto  of  the  Mathers.  He  him- 
self could  have  uttered  no  word  more  descriptive  of  the 
passion  and  achievement  of  his  own  life.  There  is  a 
chronological  list4  of  the  publications  made  in  America 
during  the  colonial  time ;  and  it  is  swollen  and  overlaid 
by  the  name  of  Cotton  Mather,  and  by  the  polyglot  and 
arduous  titles  of  his  books.  We  are  told  that  in  a  single 
year,  besides  doing  all  his  work  as  minister  of  a  great 
metropolitan  parish,  and  besides  keeping  sixty  fasts  and 
twenty  vigils,  he  published  fourteen  books.  The  whole 
number  of  his  separate  writings  published  during  his  life- 
time, exceeds  three  hundred  and  eighty-three.  No  won- 
der that  his  contemporaries  took  note  of  such  fecundity. 
One  of  them  exclaimed  : 

"  Is  the  blest  Mather  necromancer  turned  ?"• 

Another  one  declared : 

"  Play  is  his  toil,  and  work  his  recreation."* 

Very  likely,  however,  the  astonishment  we  may  feel  at 
the  multitude  of  his  productions,  will  be  considerably  tem- 

1  T.  Prince.  Pref.  to  "  Life  of  C.  Mather,"  by  S.  Mather. 

*  Joshua  Gee,  Sermon  on  Death  of  C.  Mather,  18. 

J  S.  Mather,  "  Life  of  C.  Mather,"  156. 

4  By  S.  F.  Haven,  Jr.  Archaeol.  Am.  VI.  309-666, 

1  B.  Tompson,  in  "  Magnalia,"  I.  20.  •  Ihid.  19. 


8o  HISTORY   OF  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

pered  if  we  force  ourselves  to  the  exertion  of  looking  into 
them  ;  for  not  many  of  these  productions  are  large  works, 
or  represent  labor  beyond  his  direct  preparations  for  the 
pulpit.  As  our  eyes  run  along  the  columns  crowded  with 
the  names  of  his  books,  we  seem  to  get  nearer  to  the  intel- 
lectual character  of  the  writer  of  them,  and  of  the  age  he 
lived  in,  to  find  under  what  remote  and  freakish  designa- 
tions even  very  commonplace  subjects  are  announced : 
"  Adversus  Libertines ;  or,  Evangelical  Obedience  De- 
scribed ; "  "  Boanerges,  A  Short  Essay  to  strengthen  the 
Impressions  Produced  by  Earthquakes ;  "  "  Christianus  per 
Ignem  ;  or,  a  Disciple  Warming  of  Himself  and  Owning  of 
his  Lord  ;  "  "  Coheleth,  A  Soul  upon  Recollection  coming 
into  Incontestable  Sentiments  of  Religion  ;  "  "  Hatzar- 
Maveth,  Comfortable  Words,  the  Comforts  of  One  Walk- 
ing through  the  Valley  of  the  Shadow  of  Death  ;  "  "  Nails 
Fastened  ;  or,  Proposals  of  Piety  Complied  Withal ; "  "  Or- 
naments for  the  Daughters  of  Zion,  A  Discourse  which 
Directs  the  Female  Sex  how  to  Express  the  Fear  of  God, 
and  Obtain  Temporal  and  Eternal  Blessedness  ; "  "  Or- 
phanotrophium  ;  or,  Orphans  Well-provided  for  in  the 
Divine  Providence  ;  "  "  Fasciculus  Viventium,  Essay  on  a 
Soul  Bound  up  in  the  Bundle  of  Life  ;  "  "  Ecclesiae  Monilla, 
The  Peculiar  Treasure  of  the  Almighty  King  Opened." 

The  most  famous  book  produced  by  him, — the  most  fa- 
mous book,  likewise,  produced  by  any  American  during 
the  colonial  time, — is  one  to  which,  in  these  pages,  we 
have  often  gone  for  curious  spoils:  "  Magnalia  Christi 
Americana ;  or,  The  Ecclesiastical  History  of  New  Eng- 
land, from  its  first  planting,  in  the  year  1620,  unto  the 
year  of  our  Lord  1698." * 

From  the  diary 2  of  Cotton  Mather,  it  appears  that  he 

1  First  published  in  one  folio  volume,  London,  1702  ;  republished  in 
America,  in  two  vols.  Hartford,  1820;  second  Am.  ed.  1853.  The  ed.  last 
mentioned  is  the  one  referred  to  throughout  the  present  work. 

3  Still  in  manuscript,  and  inaccessible  to  me.  For  my  present  extracts 
from  it.  I  am  indebted  to  an  interesting  paper  by  Charles  Deane,  in  Mass. 
Hist.  Soc.  Proc.  for  1862-1863,  404-414. 


COTTON  MATHER.  3t 

conceived  the  design  of  this  work  in  1693,  he  being  then 
thirty  years  of  age ;  that  in  1695,  he  published  a  prospec- 
tus of  it;  that  in  August,  1697,  he  set  apart  a  day  for  se- 
cret thanksgiving  to  God  for  divine  help  in  finishing  it ; 
and  that  thenceforward  until  1702,  when  the  book  came 
from  the  press  in  London,  he  had  innumerable  prayers, 
tears,  prostrations,  and  elevations,  respecting  its  safe  trans- 
mission to  England  and  its  slow  and  dubious  struggle  into 
print.  On  the  twenty-seventh  of  November,  1697,  "  I  did, 
at  the  close  of  the  day,  prostrate  on  my  study-floor,  joy- 
fully receive  .  .  .  assurances  from  Heaven,  .  .  .  that 
there  are  good  news  coming  to  me  from  England  .  .  . 
about  the  future  publication  of  my 'Church  History.'" 
The  twelfth  of  January,  1698,  "  I  set  apart  ...  for  the 
exercise  of  a  secret  fast  before  the  Lord,"  for  "  the  direc- 
tion of  Heaven  about  my  '  Church  History,'  the  time  and 
way  of  my  sending  it  into  Europe,  and  the  methods  of  its 
publication."  On  the  fourth  of  March,  1698,  "  in  the  close 
of  the  day,  as  I  lay  prostrate  on  my  study-floor,  in  the 
dust,  before  the  Lord,  ...  it  was  told  me  from  heaven 
that "  my  Church  History  "  shall  be  carried  safe  to  England, 
and  there  employed  for  the  service  of  my  glorious  Lord." 
On  the  sixth  of  June,  1701,  "the  Lord  supports  and  com- 
forts my  faith  about  my  '  Church  History.'  "  On  the  thir- 
teenth of  June,  1701,  "  I  received  letters  from  London.  .  .  . 
My  '  Church  History*  is  a  bulky  thing.  .  .  .  The  impres- 
sion will  cost  about  six  hundred  pounds.  The  booksellers 
in  London  are  cold  about  it."  On  the  twelfth  of  February, 
1702,  though  the  publication  of  the  book  has  been  "thus 
long  delayed  and  obstructed  and  clogged,"  "  an  heavenly 
afflatus  causes  me  sometimes  to  fall  into  tears  of  joy,  as- 
sured that  the  Lord  has  heard  my  supplications  about  this 
matter."  On  the  fourth  of  April,  1702,  "  I  was  in  much 
distress  .  .  .  concerning  my 'Church  History.'  .  .  .  Where- 
fore, I  set  apart  a  vigil  this  night.  .  .  .  Accordingly,  in  the 
dead  of  the  night,  I  first  sang  some  agreeable  psalms ;  and 
then,  casting  myself  prostrate  into  the  dust,  on  my  study- 
VOL.  II. — 6 


82  HISTORY  OF  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

floor,  before  the  Lord,  I  confessed  unto  him  the  sins  for 
which  he  might  justly  reject  me  and  all  my  services."  On 
the  eleventh  of  April,  in  a  vigil,  "  my  mind  is  irradiated 
with  celestial  and  angelical  influences,  assuring  of  me  that 
my  '  Church  History '  shall  not  be  lost,  but  shall  come 
abroad."  On  the  twenty-ninth  of  October,  1702,  "I  first 
saw  my  '  Church  History/  since  the  publication  of  it.  A 
gentleman  arrived  here  from  Newcastle  in  England,  that 
had  bought  it  there."  Wherefore,  the  following  day  "  I  set 
apart  .  .  .  for  solemn  thanksgiving  unto  God  for  his  watch- 
ful and  gracious  providence  over  that  work,  and  for  the 
harvest  of  so  many  prayers  and  cares  and  tears  and  resig- 
nations as  I  had  employed  upon  it." 

The  "  Magnalia "  is,  indeed,  what  the  author  called  it, 
"  a  bulky  thing," — the  two  volumes  of  the  latest  edition 
having  upwards  of  thirteen  hundred  pages.  Its  scope  may 
be  sufficiently  seen  by  a  glance  at  the  subjects  of  the  seven 
books  into  which  it  is  divided.  The  first  book  is  a  history 
of  the  settlement  of  New  England ;  the  second  contains 
"  the  lives  of  the  governors  and  the  names  of  the  magis- 
trates that  have  been  shields  unto  the  churches  of  New 
England  ; "  the  third  recounts  "  the  lives  of  sixty  famous 
divines,  by  whose  ministry  the  churches  of  New  England 
have  been  planted  and  continued  ;  "  the  fourth  is  devoted 
to  the  history  of  Harvard  College,  and  of  "  some  eminent 
persons  therein  educated  ;  "  the  fifth  describes  "  the  faith 
and  order  of  the  churches ;  "  the  sixth  speaks  of  "  many 
illustrious  discoveries  and  demonstrations  of  the  Divine 
Providence  in  remarkable  mercies  and  judgments  ;  "  and 
the  seventh,  entitled  "  A  Book  of  the  Wars  of  the  Lord," 
narrates  "  the  afflictive  disturbances  which  the  churches 
of  New  England  have  suffered  from  their  various  adver- 
saries " — the  Devil,  Separatists,  Familists,  Antinomians, 
Quakers,  clerical  impostors,  and  Indians. 

Here  is  an  imposing  array  of  historical  topics  ;  and  for 
the  treatment  of  them,  no  other  man  ever  had,  or  ever 
can  have,  such  advantages  as  had  Cotton  Mather : — multi- 


COTTON  MATHER.  83 

tudes  of  original  papers  of  all  sorts  within  easy  reach, 
that  have  since  perished  ;  personal  acquaintance  with  all 
the  great  New  England  leaders  or  with  those  who  had 
personally  known  them  ;  finally,  access  to  innumerable  and 
most  valuable  oral  traditions,  which  afterward  would  have 
died  for  lack  of  record.  On  the  other  hand,  it  must  be 
said  that  for  the  performance  of  careful  and  disinterested 
historical  work,  few  men  that  have  undertaken  it,  ever  had 
greater  disadvantages ;  since  there  were  in  him  traits  that 
constituted  an  intellectual  and  moral  inability  to  be  either 
accurate  or  fair.  He  had  an  insuperable  fondness  for 
tumultuous,  swelling,  and  flabby  declamation,  and  for  edi- 
fying remarks,  in  place  of  a  statement  of  the  exact  facts 
in  the  case ;  infinite  credulity ;  infinite  carelessness ;  finally, 
a  disposition  to  stain  the  chaste  pages  of  history  with  the 
tints  of  his  family  friendships  and  his  family  feuds. 

Upon  the  whole,  as  an  historian,  he  was  unequal  to  his 
high  opportunity.  The  "Magnalia"  has  great  merits;  it 
has,  also,  fatal  defects.  In  its  mighty  chaos  of  fables  and 
blunders  and  misrepresentations,  are  of  course  lodged 
many  single  facts  of  the  utmost  value,  personal  reminis- 
cences, social  gossip,  snatches  of  conversation,  touches  of 
description,  traits  of  character  and  life,  that  can  be  found 
nowhere  else,  and  that  help  us  to  paint  for  ourselves 
some  living  picture  of  the  great  men  and  the  great  days 
of  early  New  England  ;  yet  herein,  also,  history  and  fiction 
are  so  jumbled  and  shuffled  together,  that  it  is  never  pos- 
sible to  tell,  without  other  help  than  the  author's,  just 
where  the  fiction  ends  and  the  history  begins.  On  no  dis- 
puted question  of  fact  is  the  unaided  testimony  of  Cotton 
Mather  of  much  weight ;  and  it  is  probably  true,  as  a  very 
acute  though  very  unfriendly  modern  critic  of  his  has  de- 
clared, that  he  has  "  published  more  errors  of  carelessness 
than  any  other  writer  on  the  history  of  New  England."  ' 

Though  the  fame  of  the  "  Magnalia  "  overshadows  that 

1  James  Savage,  in  J.  Winthrop,  "  Hist.  N.  E."  II.  28.  note. 


84  HISTORY  OF  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

of  all  the  other  writings  produced  by  its  author,  it  was 
the  book  of  a  young  man — if,  indeed,  we  are  permitted  to 
suppose  that  Cotton  Mather  ever  was  a  young  man.  Of 
the  books  he  wrote  after  that,  and  especially  in  his  later 
years,  several  are  more  readable,  and  perhaps  also  more 
valuable,  than  the  work  on  which  his  literary  renown  prin- 
cipally rests. 

One  of  these  is  "  Bonifacius,  An  Essay  upon  the  Good 
that  is  to  be  Devised  and  Designed,  with  Proposals  of  un- 
exceptionable Methods  to  do  Good  in  the  World  :  " — a 
book  quite  remarkable  for  the  clear  ingenuity  and  the 
fascinating  power  with  which  it  reduces  charity  to  an  exact 
science,  and  plans  the  systematic  transaction  of  good 
deeds  on  business  principles ;  a  book  to  which  Benjamin 
Franklin,1  in  his  old  age,  paid  the  highest  tribute — saying, 
that  it  had  largely  directed  his  conduct  through  life,  and 
had  done  much  to  make  him  a  useful  citizen  of  the  world  ; 
a  book  which  holds  the  germs  and  hints  of  nearly  all  those 
vast  organizations  of  benevolence  that  have  been  the  glory 
of  the  years  since  it  was  written. 

Upon  the  great  and  agitating  theme  of  psalmody  in  his 
time,  Cotton  Mather  obviously  needed  to  be  heard ;  and 
in  1718,  he  expressed  himself  on  the  subject,  with  his 
usual  explicitness,  in  "Psalterium  Americanum,"  which  is 
simply  "  The  Book  of  Psalms  "  translated  from  the  Hebrew 
into  English  blank-verse.  In  his  introduction  to  the  work, 
he  laments  that  in  all  the  many  versions  of  the  Psalms  be- 
fore his  own,  "  those  rich  things  which  the  Holy  Spirit  of 
God  speaks  in  the  original  Hebrew,"  are  confounded  with 
the  rubbish  of  human  inventions,  and  all  this  "  merely  for 
the  sake  of  preserving  the  clink  of  the  rhyme,  which  after 
all  is  of  small  consequence  unto  a  generous  poem,  and  of 
none  at  all  unto  the  melody  of  singing, — but  of  how  little, 
then,  in  singing  unto  the  Lord."a 

Probably  the  most  vigorous  and  entertaining  book  that 

1  Works,  X.  83.  8  Introd.  vii. 


COTTON  MATHER.  85 

/le  ever  wrote,  is  one  that  is  also  the  most  characteristic  ex- 
pression of  his  later  mental  development,  "  Manuductio 
ad  Ministerium," — a  manual  of  "  directions  for  a  candidate 
of  the  ministry,"  published  at  Boston  in  1726,  only  two 
years  before  the  author's  death.  It  describes,  first,  what 
the  religious  character  of  the  candidate  should  be;  sec- 
ondly, what  course  he  should  take  for  his  intellectual 
improvement ;  and,  thirdly,  what  should  be  his  "  conduct 
after  his  appearance  in  the  world," — all  intended  to  make 
him  "  a  skilful  and  useful  minister  of  the  gospel."  The 
book  is  written  heartily,  with  real  enthusiasm  for  the  sub- 
ject, and  with  greater  directness  and  simplicity  of  style 
than  the  author  has  shown  in  any  other  work.  Of  course, 
being  written  by  Cotton  Mather,  it  is  ostentatious  of  his 
vast  reading  and  of  his  heroic  grasp  of  all  studies ;  it  is, 
also,  in  some  measure,  an  index  to  the  state  of  literature, 
of  science,  of  criticism,  of  general  culture,  in  New  England 
at  that  time  ;  and,  in  many  places,  it  is  positively  sprightly 
and  amusing. 

As  would  be  expected,  he  draws  out  a  generous  scheme 
of  study  for  his  clerical  proteg£  ;  summons  him  to  make 
all  knowledge  tributary  to  his  splendid  vocation  ;  bids  him 
scorn  the  shallow  and  ignorant  notions  of  professional  at- 
tainment then  spreading  in  New  England.  He  urges  him, 
for  instance,  to  become  a  master  of  Hebrew ;  although 
that  language  "  is  fallen  under  so  much  disrepute  as  to 
make  a  learned  man  almost  afraid  of  owning  that  he  has 
anything  of  it,  lest  it  should  bring  him  under  the  suspicion 
of  being  an  odd,  starved,  lank  sort  of  a  thing,  who  had 
lived  only  on  Hebrew  roots  all  his  days."  * 

He  urges  upon  the  young  minister  the  need  of  master- 
ing the  lessons  of  history,  and  yet  to  be  on  his  guard 
against  the  falsehoods  of  history — a  theme  on  which 
Cotton  Mather  had  an  uncommon  right  to  speak:  "The 
instances  wherein  false  history  has  been  imposed  upon  the 

1  "  Manuductio,"  etc.  30. 


86  HISTORY  OF  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

world  are  what  cannot  be  numbered.  Historians  have 
generally  taken  after  their  father,  Herodotus;  .  .  .  though 
they  have  not  all  of  them  always  been  such  mercenary  vil- 
lains ...  as  that  scandalous  fellow,  who  .  .  .  hired  him- 
self out  as  an  history-writer  for  the  highest  bidder.  .  .  . 
Yea,  there  are  historians  of  whom  one  can  scarcely  tell, 
which  to  admire  most,  the  nature  of  their  lies,  or  their 
manner  of  telling  them — I  mean,  the  impudence  with 
which  they  tell  them.  ...  Be  sure,  the  late  historians  that 
pretend  unto  an  History  of  England,  .  .  .  write  with  such 
flagrant  partialities,  and  are  such  evident  leasing-makers, 
.  .  .  that  one  may  as  well  believe  the  'True  History'  of  a 
Lucian,  as  yield  any  credit  unto  them.  .  .  .  Indeed,  the 
historians  never  keep  closer  to  the  way  of  lying,  than  in  the 
relation  they  give  of  those  twenty  years  which  passed  after 
the  beginning  of  our  Civil  Wars.  .  .  .  Among  these,  the 
romance  that  goes  under  the  title  of  'The  History  of  the 
Grand  Rebellion,'  and  is  fathered  on  the  Earl  of  Claren- 
don, I  would  have  you  more  particularly  treat  with  the 
disregard  that  is  proper  for  it."1 

In  directing  his  pupil  to  the  study  of  natural  philosophy, 
he  passes  into  a  satirical  denunciation  of  Aristotle :  "  When 
I  said  natural  philosophy,  you  may  be  sure  I  did  not  mean 
the  Peripatetic.  ...  It  is,  indeed,  amazing  to  see  the  fate 
of  the  writings  which  go  under  the  name  of  Aristotle. 
First,  falling  into  the  hands  of  those  who  could  not  read 
them,  and  yet  for  the  sake  of  the  famous  author  were 
willing  to  keep  them,  they  were  for  a  long  while  hid  under 
ground,  where  many  of  them  deserved  a  lodging.  And 
from  this  place  of  darkness,  the  torn  and  worn  manuscripts 
were  anon  fetched  out,  and  imperfectly  and  unfaithfully 
enough  transcribed,  and  conveyed  from  Athens  to  Rome. 
.  .  .  The  Saracens  by  and  by  got  them.  .  .  .  When  learn- 
ing revived  under  Charlemagne,  all  Europe  turned  Aristo- 
telian ;  yea,  in  some  universities  they  swore  allegiance  to 

1  "  Manuductio,"  etc.  60-63. 


COTTON  MATHER.  g/ 

him ;  and,  O  monstrous !  if  I  am  not  misinformed,  they  do, 
in  some  universities  at  this  day,  foolishly  and  profanely  on 
their  knees  continue  to  do  so.  With  the  vile  person  that 
made  himself  the  head  of  the  Church  at  Rome,  this  muddy- 
headed  pagan  divided  the  empire  over  the  Christian  world ; 
but  extended  his  empire  further  than  he,  or  even  Tamer- 
lane. The  very  Jews  themselves  became  his  vassals.  .  .  . 
And  though  Europe  has,  with  fierce  and  long  struggles 
about  it,  begun  to  shake  off  the  shackles,  he  does  to  this 
day  .  .  .  continue  to  tyrannize  over  human  understanding 
in  a  great  part  of  the  oriental  world.  No  mortal  else  ever 
had  such  a  prerogative  to  govern  mankind  as  this  philos- 
opher, who,  after  the  prodigious  cartloads  of  stuff  that 
has  been  written  to  explain  him,  ...  he  yet  remains  in 
many  .  .  .  things  sufficiently  unintelligible,  and  forever  in 
almost  all  things  unprofitable.  Avicen,  after  he  had  read 
his  Metaphysics  forty  times  over,  and  had  them  all  by 
heart,  was  forced  after  all  to  lay  them  aside  in  despair  of 
ever  understanding  them."1 

In  this  fatherly  talk  of  an  elderly  prophet  with  one  of 
his  professional  sons,  he  does  not  always  succeed  in  keep- 
ing upon  the  level  of  ordinary  discourse,  but  occasionally 
ascends  to  the  grand  style  that  is  most  natural  to  him  ;  as 
when  he  imparts  to  the  youth  this  consoling  assurance : 
"  I  will  not  now  suppose  a  quinquarticular  controversy, 
but  rather  propose  a  ternaticular  period  of  all  controver- 
sies." a 

The  true  place  of  Cotton  Mather  in  our  literary  his- 
tory is  indicated  when  we  say,  that  he  was  in  prose 
writing,  exactly  what  Nicholas  Noyes  was  in  poetry, — the 
last,  the  most  vigorous,  and,  therefore,  the  most  disagree- 
able representative  of  the  Fantastic  school  in  literature ; 
and  that,  like  Nicholas  Noyes,  he  prolonged  in  New  Eng- 
land the  methods  of  that  school  even  after  his  most  culti- 
vated contemporaries  there  had  outgrown  them,  and  had 

1  "  Manuductio,"  etc.  47~49-  *  Ibid.  119. 


88  H1STOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITER  A  TURE. 

come  to  dislike  them.  The  expulsion  of  the  beautiful 
from  thought,  from  sentiment,  from  language ;  a  lawless 
and  a  merciless  fury  for  the  odd,  the  disorderly,  the  gro- 
tesque, the  violent ;  strained  analogies,  unexpected  images, 
pedantries,  indelicacies,  freaks  of  allusion,  monstrosities 
of  phrase  ; — these  are  the  traits  of  Cotton  Mather's  writ- 
ing, even  as  they  are  the  traits  common  to  that  perverse 
and  detestable  literary  mood  that  held  sway  in  different 
countries  of  Christendom  during  the  sixteenth  and  seven- 
teenth centuries.  Its  birthplace  was  Italy;  New  England 
was  its  grave  ;  Cotton  Mather  was  its  last  great  apostle. 

His  writings,  in  fact,  are  an  immense  reservoir  of  exam- 
ples in  Fantastic  prose.  Their  most  salient  characteristic 
is  pedantry, — a  pedantry  that  is  gigantic,  stark,  untem- 
pered,  rejoicing  in  itself,  unconscious  of  shame,  filling  all 
space  in  his  books  like  an  atmosphere.  The  mind  of  Cot- 
ton Mather  was  so  possessed  by  the  books  he  had  read, 
that  his  most  common  thought  had  to  force  its  way  into 
utterance  through  dense  hedges  and  jungles  of  quotation. 
Not  only  every  sentence,  but  nearly  every  clause,  pivots 
itself  on  some  learned  allusion ;  and  by  inveterate  habit 
he  had  come  to  consider  all  subjects,  not  directly,  but  in 
their  reflections  and  echoes  in  books.  It  is  quite  evident, 
too,  that,  just  as  the  poet  often  shapes  his  idea  to  his 
rhymes  and  is  helped  to  an  idea  by  his  rhyme,  so  Mather's 
mind  acquired  the  knack  of  steering  his  thought  so  as  to 
take  in  his  quotation,  from  which  in  turn,  perhaps,  he 
reaped  another  thought. 

That  his  manner  of  writing  outlived  the  liking  of  his  con- 
temporaries, especially  his  later  contemporaries,  is  plain. 
The  best  of  them, — Jeremiah  Dummer,  Benjamin  Colman, 
John  Barnard,  Mather  Byles,  Charles  Chauncey,  Jonathan 
Mayhew,  rejected  his  style,  and  formed  themselves,  in- 
stead, upon  the  temperate  and  tasteful  prose  that  had 
already  come  into  use  in  England  ;  while,  even  by  his  most 
devoted  admirers,  the  vices  of  his  literary  expression  were 
acknowledged.  Thomas  Prince,  for  example,  gently  said 


COTTON  MATHER.  g^ 

af  him :  "  In  his  style  he  was  something  singular,  and 
not  so  agreeable  to  the  gust  of  the  age." l  Even  his  own 
son,  Samuel  Mather,  regretted  his  fault  of  "straining  for 
far-fetched  and  dear-bought  hints."  * 

But  Cotton  Mather  had  not  formed  his  style  by  acci- 
dent, nor  was  he  without  a  philosophy  to  justify  it.  In 
early  life  he  described  his  compositions  as  ornamented  "  by 
the  multiplied  references  to  other  and  former  concerns, 
closely  couched,  for  the  observation  of  the  attentive,  in 
almost  every  paragraph  ; "  and  declared  that  this  was 
"  the  best  way  of  writing."  8  And  in  his  old  age,  nettled 
by  the  many  sarcastic  criticisms  that  were  made  upon  his 
style  by  presumptuous  persons  even  in  his  own  city,  he 
resumed  the  subject ;  and  in  a  simple  and  trenchant  pas- 
sage, of  real  worth  not  only  for  itself  but  for  its  bearing 
upon  the  literary  spirit  of  the  period,  he  proudly  defended 
his  own  literary  manner,  and  even  retorted  criticism  upon 
the  literary  manner  of  his  assailants  :  "  There  has  been 
a  deal  of  ado  about  a  style.  .  .  .  There  is  a  way  of  writ- 
ing, wherein  the  author  endeavors  that  the  reader  may 
have  something  to  the  purpose  in  every  paragraph.  There 
is  not  only  a  vigor  sensible  in  every  sentence,  but  the 
paragraph  is  embellished  with  profitable  references,  even 
to  something  beyond  what  is  directly  spoken.  Formal 
and  painful  quotations  are  not  studied ;  yet  all  that  could 
be  learned  from  them  is  insinuated.  The  writer  pretends 
not  unto  reading,  yet  he  could  not  have  writ  as  he  does  if 
he  had  not  read  very  much  in  his  time ;  and  his  com- 
posures are  not  only  a  cloth  of  gold,  but  also  stuck  with 
as  many  jewels  as  the  gown  of  a  Russian  ambassador. 
This  way  of  writing  has  been  decried  by  many,  and  is 
at  this  day  more  than  ever  so,  for  the  same  reason  that  in 
the  old  story  the  grapes  were  decried,  '  That  they  were 
not  ripe.'  A  lazy,  ignorant,  conceited  set  of  authors  would 

1  Sermon  on  Death  of  Cotton  Mather,  24. 
1  S.  Mather,  "  Life  of  C.  Mather,"  69. 
»  "  Magnalia,"  I.  31. 


9o 


HISTORY  OF  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 


persuade  the  whole  tribe  to  lay  aside  that  way  of  writing, 
for  the  same  reason  that  one  would  have  persuaded  his 
brethren  to  part  with  the  encumbrance  of  their  bushy 
tails.  But,  however  fashion  and  humor  may  prevail,  they 
must  not  think  that  the  club  at  their  coffee-house  is  all 
the  world.  But  there  will  always  be  those  who  will  in  this 
case  be  governed  by  indisputable  reason,  and  who  will 
think  that  the  real  excellency  of  a  book  will  never  lie  in 
saying  of  little ;  that  the  less  one  has  for  his  money  in  a 
book,  'tis  really  the  more  valuable  for  it ;  and  that  the  less 
one  is  instructed  in  a  book,  and  the  more  of  superfluous 
margin  and  superficial  harangue,  and  the  less  of  substan- 
tial matter  one  has  in  it,  the  more  'tis  to  be  accounted 
of.  And  if  a  more  massy  way  of  writing  be  never  so 
much  disgusted  at  this  day,  a  better  gust  will  come  on. 
.  .  .  The  blades  that  set  up  for  critics,  appear  to  me, 
for  the  most  part,  as  contemptible  as  they  are  a  super- 
cilious generation.  .  .  .  Nor  can  you  easily  find  any  one 
thing  wherein  they  agree  for  their  style,  except  perhaps  a 
perpetual  care  to  give  us  jejune  and  empty  pages.  .  .  . 
There  is  much  talk  of  a  florid  style  obtaining  among  the 
pens  that  are  most  in  vogue  ;  but  how  often  would  it 
puzzle  one,  even  with  the  best  glasses,  to  find  the  flowers. 
.  .  .  After  all,  every  man  will  have  his  own  style,  which 
will  distinguish  him  as  much  as  his  gait." i 

IV. 

SAMUEL  MATHER,  the  son  of  Cotton  Mather,  was  born 
in  1706;  was  graduated  at  Harvard  College  in  1723;  and 
in  1732,  became  one  of  the  pastors  of  the  church  in  the 
service  of  which  his  father  and  his  grandfather  had  spent 
their  lives.  In  1741,  in  consequence  of  disaffection  in 
that  church,  he  led  off  a  portion  of  it,  and  formed  a  new 
church,  of  which  he  continued  to  be  the  pastor  until  his 

1  "  Manuductio,"  etc.  44-46. 


SAMUEL  MATHER.  gi 

death,  in  1785.  In  him,  evidently,  the  ancestral  fire  had 
become  almost  extinct.  He  had  abundant  learning;  was 
extremely  industrious ;  published  many  things — discourses, 
a  biography  of  his  father,  theological  and  historical  treat- 
ises, even  a  poem ;  but  there  was  not  in  them,  as  there 
was  not  in  him,  the  victorious  energy  of  an  original  mind, 
or  even  the  winning  felicity  of  an  imitative  one.  In  the 
strifes  of  the  Revolution  his  course  was  both  patriotic  and 
bitter :  he  differed  from  some  of  his  kindred,  by  taking  the 
side  of  the  colonies  against  the  king ;  he  disinherited  his 
only  son  for  loyalty  to  the  Crown  ;  he  described  his  loyalist 
brother-in-law,  Governor  Thomas  Hutchinson,  as  a  "  mis- 
guided and  avaricious  "  man,  and  as  "  doomed  to  perpetual 
infamy  ;  "  and  the  whole  "  body  of  Tories  and  Refugees," 
he  denounced,  in  the  language  of  William  Pitt,  as  "  the 
most  infamous  scoundrels  on  the  face  of  the  earth." 1  He 
was  a  sturdy  and  a  worthy  man.  He  left  no  successor 
to  continue  the  once-splendid  dynasty  of  his  tribe.  He 
was  the  last,  and  the  least,  of  the  Mathers. 

1  S.  G.  Drake's  Introd.   to  I.  Mather's  "  Hist    of  King   Philip*  War," 
xriii.-xzii 


CHAPTER  XIII. 

NEW  ENGLAND  :   TOPICS   OF  POPULAR  DISCUSSION. 

I.— Early  literary  prominence  of  the  clergy— Growth  of  the  laity  in  intellec- 
tual influence — The  range  of  the  people's  thought  and  talk  during  the 
second  colonial  period. 

II. — The  mournful  reminiscences  of  Joshua  Scottow — The  witchcraft  spasm — 
Robert  Calef  and  "  More  Wonders  of  the  Invisible  World." 

III.— The  diary  in  literature — Sarah  Kemble  Knight — Her  "Journal"— 
Pictures  of  travel  and  of  rustic  manners  early  in  the  eighteenth  century. 

IV. — Samuel  Sewall — His  brave  life — The  man — His  attitude  toward  witch- 
craft and  slavery. — His  "  Selling  of  Joseph" — Among  the  prophets — "  A 
Description  of  the  New  Heaven  " — The  New  Jerusalem  to  be  in  America 
— A  gallant  champion  of  the  immortality  of  the  souls  of  women. 

V. — John  Wise — His  inadequate  fame — His  genius  as  a  writer — His  career 
as  preacher,  muscular  Christian,  and  opponent  of  despotism — The  first 
great  American  expounder  of  democracy  in  church  and  state — His  vic- 
torious assault  upon  a  scheme  for  clerical  aggrandizement — "  The  Churches' 
Quarrel  Espoused  " — The  logic,  wit,  and  eloquence  of  the  book — His 
"  Vindication  of  the  Government  of  New  England  Churches  " — Analysis 
of  the  book — Traits  of  his  mind  and  style. 

VI. — Jeremiah  Dummer — His  early  fame — Short  career  as  a  preacher — Goes 
to  London  and  becomes  courtier,  barrister,  and  colonial  agent — A  faithful 
American  always — His  "  Letter  to  a  Noble  Lord  " — His  "  Defence  of  the 
New  England  Charters  " — The  elegance  and  strength  of  his  style. 

VII. — The  almanac  in  modern  literature — Its  early  prominence  in  America — 
Its  function — Wit  and  wisdom  in  almanacs  not  originated  by  Franklin — 
Nathaniel  Ames,  the  greatest  of  our  colonial  almanac-makers — His  "  As- 
tronomical Diary  and  Almanac,"  an  annual  miscellany  of  information  and 
amusement— Its  great  popularity  and  utility— Its  predictions— Its  shrewd 
and  earnest  appeals  to  the  common  mind — Its  suggestions  concerning 
health — Its  original  verses — Predicts  the  Day  of  Judgment — A  noble 
prophecy  of  universal  peace — Vision  of  the  coming  greatness  of  America — 
A  friendly  address  to  posterity. 

I. 

IN  the  history  of  literature  in  New  England  during  the 
colonial  time,  one  fact  stands  out  above  all  others, — the 

92 


THE  LAITY  IN  NEW  ENGLAND. 


93 


intellectual  leadership  of  the  clergy,  and  that,  too,  among 
a  laity  neither  ignorant  nor  weak.  This  leadership  was  in 
every  sense  honorable,  both  for  the  leaders  and  the  led. 
It  was  not  due  alone  to  the  high  authority  of  the  clerical 
office  in  New  England  ;  it  was  due  still  more  to  the  per- 
sonal greatness  of  the  men  who  filled  that  office,  and  who 
themselves  made  the  office  great.  They  were  intellectual 
leaders  because  they  deserved  to  be  ;  for,  living  among  a 
well-educated  and  high-spirited  people,  they  knew  more, 
were  wiser,  were  abler,  than  all  other  persons  in  the  com- 
munity. Of  such  a  leadership,  it  was  an  honor  even  to  be 
among  the  followers.  And  in  our  record  of  the  literary 
achievements  of  New  England  in  the  colonial  time,  the 
clergy  fill  by  far  the  largest  space,  because,  in  all  depart- 
ments of  writing,  they  did  by  far  the  largest  amount  of 
work. 

After  the  first  half  century  of  New  England  life,  another 
fact  comes  into  notice, — the  advance  of  the  laity  in  liter- 
ary activity.  By  that  time,  many  strong  and  good  men, 
who  had  been  educated  there  in  all  the  learning  of  the  age, 
either  not  entering  the  clerical  profession  or  not  remaining 
in  it,  began  to  organize  and  to  develop  the  other  learned 
professions — the  legal,  medical,  and  tuitionary — and,  ap- 
pealing to  the  public  through  various  forms  of  literature, 
to  divide  more  and  more  with  the  clergy  the  leadership  of 
men's  minds.  Moreover,  in  the  last  decade  of  the  seven- 
teenth century,  an  attempt  was  made  to  establish  a  news- 
paper in  New  England.  The  attempt  failed.  In  the  first 
decade  of  the  eighteenth  century,  another  attempt  was 
made,  and  did  not  fail ;  and  long  before  the  end  of  our 
colonial  epoch,  a  new  profession  had  come  into  existence, 
having  a  power  to  act  on  the  minds  of  men  more  mightily 
than  any  other, — the  profession  of  journalism. 

Thus,  as  public  discussion  grew  in  the  number  of  those 
who  were  participators  in  it,  so  also  did  it  increase  in  the 
variety  of  its  methods,  and  in  the  range  of  its  themes. 
Henceforward  we  may  trace  the  intellectual  life  of  New 


94 


HISTORY  OP  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 


England,  not  merely  in  sermons,  in  formal  theological 
treatises,  in  grave  narratives  of  civil  and  military  experi- 
ence, in  sombre  and  painful  religious  poetry,  but  likewise 
in  compact  literary  essays,  in  pamphlets  sprightly  or  brutal 
or  stupid,  in  satires,  in  almanacs,  in  popular  songs,  in  edi- 
torial articles.  Public  discussion  became  secularized.  At 
last,  even  this  world  began  to  receive  some  attention,  and 
to  be  written  about.  Witchcraft,  state-craft,  the  small-pox, 
the  behavior  of  the  royal  governors,  the  words  and  deeds 
of  preachers,  quarrels  of  churches,  quarrels  of  towns  and 
of  colonies,  agriculture,  the  currency,  repudiation,  manu- 
factures, the  training  of  soldiers,  the  founding  of  colleges, 
Whitefield,  religious  mania,  dress,  drunkenness,  wars  with 
the  Indians,  wars  with  the  French,  earthquakes,  comets, 
the  new  wonders  of  science,  the  impiety  of  averting  light- 
ning by  the  "  electrical  points,"  the  truth  of  Christianity, 
the  damnation  of  infants,  the  right  to  think,  the  conquest 
of  Canada,  the  consolidation  of  the  English  colonies  in 
America,  the  grand  future  of  the  American  continent,  the 
virtues  of  the  English  kings,  the  love  and  loyalty  of  Amer- 
ica for  England, — these  were  some  of  the  subjects  that, 
year  by  year,  along  our  second  colonial  period,  possessed 
the  thoughts  of  men  and  women  in  New  England,  and 
found  some  sort  of  utterance  in  literature. 


II. 

In  1691,  a  thrifty  old  merchant  of  Boston,  Joshua  Scot- 
tow,1  who  had  grown  up  with  the  colony  almost  from  the 
beginning,  published  a  little  book  of  senile  lamentations 
over  the  degeneracy  of  the  age.  It  was  called  "  Old  Men's 
Tears  for  their  own  Declensions."  2  Encouraged  by  this 


1  Born  probably  1615,  died  1698.  Sketch  of  him  in  2  Mass.  Hist.  Soc. 
Coll.  IV.  100-104. 

s  A  second  edition  was  published  in  1749,  but  without  the  best  part  of  it, 
the  "Address  to  the  Reader." 


ROBERT  CALEF.  95 

stroke  at  authorship,  he  gave  to  the  press,  three  years 
afterward,  "  A  Narrative  of  the  Planting  of  the  Massachu- 
setts Colony,"  '  beginning  with  1628,  and  particularly  ac- 
centing the  fact  of  "  the  Lord's  signal  presence  the  first 
thirty  years."  Both  books  have  some  historical  and  psycho- 
logical value,  but  as  literature  are  worthless.  His  method 
of  expression  is  spasmodic,  ecstatic,  full  of  apocalyptic 
symbols,  cant,  forced  allusions,  and  the  croakings  of  de- 
crepitude. In  the  dedication  of  his  second  book  to  Simon 
Bradstreet,  he  had  the  good  sense  to  anticipate  that  his 
writings  might  be  pronounced  "  the  delirious  dotage  of  his 
puerile  and  superannuated  brains." 

The  paroxysms  of  terror  and  of  frenzy  into  which,  dur- 
ing the  last  decade  of  the  seventeenth  century,  multitudes 
of  people  in  New  England  were  thrown  by  the  witchcraft 
excitement,  gave  birth  to  numerous  publications,  chiefly 
hortatory,  minatory,  and  inflammatory  ;  and  to  one  publi- 
cation that  was  at  least  rational,  "  More  Wonders  of  the 
Invisible  World,"  published  in  London  in  1700,  and  writ- 
ten by  a  merchant  of  Boston,  Robert  Calef,  then  forty- 
eight  years  of  age.8  Though  the  book  is  quite  destitute 
of  literary  expertness ;  is  without  symmetry  in  substance 
or  felicity  in  form  ;  is,  indeed,  a  hodge-pudding  of  facts, 
hints,  queries,  and  conjectures ;  it  is  not  destitute  of  ex- 
pertness of  other  kinds, — particularly  that  kind  of  expert- 
ness  which,  in  a  time  of  general  enravishment,  may  enable 
one  cool  head  to  be  an  antidote  to  a  multitude  of  hot 
ones.  It  is  a  reservoir  of  weird  psychological  phenomena, 
first  frankly  described  in  the  credulous  speech  of  the 
brotherhood  and  sisterhood  of  victims,  then  chilled  and 
taken  to  pieces  by  a  process  of  Sadducean  counter-evi- 
dence and  cross-examination.  It  is,  also,  a  monument  of 
the  moral  courage  and  the  intellectual  poise  of  its  author ; 
of  his  firm,  placid  tenacity  in  demanding  some  real  evi- 

1  Reprinted  in  4  Mass.  Hist.  Soc.  Coll.  IV.  279-330. 
»  N.  E.  Hist,  and  Gen.  Reg.  XXX.  461. 


96  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

dence  as  the  price  of  his  belief ;  of  his  obstinate  incredulity 
to  the  end  ;  all  this  in  contrast  with  the  intolerant  eager- 
ness of  his  contemporaries  to  rush  headlong  into  folly; 
their  hectic  mental  spasms ;  and  their  appetency — at  once 
voracious  and  ferocious — for  marvels,  born  in  malice  or  in 
madness,  and  ending  in  infamy  and  in  death.  For  the 
chief  clerical  leaders  in  the  witchcraft  excitement,  espe- 
cially the  two  Mathers,  this  book,  both  by  its  scepticism 
and  by  its  personal  irreverence,  was  most  exasperating. 
The  younger  of  these  two  divines  wreaked  his  rage  upon  the 
book  by  calling  it  "  a  firebrand  thrown  by  a  madman  ;  " * 
and  the  elder  of  them,  at  that  time  president  of  Harvard 
College,  tried  to  extinguish  the  book  by  having  it  publicly 
burned  in  the  college-yard.  But  its  peculiar  power  could 
not  be  stifled  in  a  hangman's  smudge  ;  and  one  may  truly 
say  of  it,  that  it  went  far  to  unmadden  a  whole  population 
of  devout  and  learned  lunatics. 


III. 

There  is  one  form  of  writing — the  diary — that  costs  lit- 
tle to  produce  ;  that  is  usually  valued  at  little  by  its  pro- 
ducers ;  but  that  often  gathers  incalculable  worth  with 
time,  outlives  many  laborious  and  ambitious  literary  mon- 
uments, and  becomes  a  storehouse  of  treasures  for  histo- 
rians, poets,  and  painters.  It  cannot  be  said  that  our  an- 
cestors failed  to  write  diaries.  Unluckily,  however,  the 
diaries  that  they  wrote  in  great  abundance,  were  generally 
records  of  events  which  took  place  only  inside  of  them ; 
psychological  diaries,  more  or  less  mystical  and  unhealthy ; 
chronicles  of  tender,  scrupulous,  introverted  natures,  mis- 
led into  gratuitous  self-torture;  narratives  of  their  own 
spiritual  moods  fluctuating  hour  by  hour,  of  the  visitations 
of  Satan,  of  dulness  or  of  ecstasy  in  prayer,  of  doubts  or 
hopes  respecting  their  share  in  the  divine  decrees ;  itiner- 

1  C.  Mather,  "  Some  Few  Remarks  upon  a  Scandalous  Book,"  5. 


SARAH  KEMBLE  KNIGHT. 


97 


aries  of  daily  religious  progress,  aggravated  by  overwork, 
indigestion,  and  a  gospel  of  gloom. 

There  has  come  down  to  us,  however,  from  our  second 
literary  period,  one  specimen  of  the  diary,  which,  though 
crude  enough  in  texture,  is  refreshingly  carnal,  external, 
and  healthy.  It  is  "  The  Journal  "  kept  by  Mistress  Sarah 
Kemble  Knight,  a  dame  of  Boston — buxom,  blithe,  and 
debonair — who  in  October,  1704,  being  then  thirty-eight 
years  of  age,  a  wife  and  a  mother,  travelled  on  horseback 
from  Boston  through  Rhode  Island  and  southern  Con- 
necticut to  New  Haven,  a  journey  of  five  days;  thence,  in 
December,  to  New  York,  a  journey  of  two  days ;  returning 
home  by  the  same  route,  and  reaching  Boston  in  March, 
1705.  In  the  pauses  of  her  journey  each  day,  she  carefully 
jotted  down  her  adventures  and  her  own  comments  upon 
them,  doing  this  with  no  little  sprightliness  and  graphic 
power.  The  roads  were  rough,  often  uncertain  ;  the  cross- 
ings of  the  rivers  were  perilous  ;  the  inns  were  abominable  ; 
the  manners  of  the  people  churlish,  their  speech  a  jargon 
of  disgusting  slang.  Her  "Journal,"  published  for  the 
first  time  in  1825,'  is  an  amusing  little  book,  and  has  special 
value  as  a  realistic  picture  of  rural  manners  in  New  York 
and  New  England  in  the  first  decade  of  the  eighteenth 
century.  She  had  no  companions  upon  her  expedition, 
except  as  she  hired  them  or  fell  in  with  them  by  the  way ; 
and  she  bore  the  annoyances  of  the  journey  with  a  sort  of 
mocking  and  recalcitrant  resignation,  which  was  only  saved 
from  going  to  pieces  altogether  by  help  of  an  eye  quick 
to  see  the  ludicrous  aspects  of  disagreeable  things — partic- 
ularly as  soon  as  they  were  past.  Her  note-book,  indeed, 
was  a  sovereign  safety-valve  to  her,  forming  a  harmless 
conduit  through  which  she  could  pour  her  hourly  vexa- 
tions, in  playful  little  puffs  of  prose  and  verse.  Thus, 
having  to  cross  a  certain  river,  and  not  daring  to  do  so  by 

1  Edited  by  Theodore  Dwight.     Reprinted,  with  new  preface  and  addi- 
tional information  about  her,  Albany,  1865. 
VOL   ?'  — •» 


98 


HISTORY  OF  AMERICAN  LITER  A  TURE. 


fording  it  on  horseback,  she  went  over  it  in  a  wretched 
canoe — a  far  less  safe  ferry-boat  than  her  horse  would  have 
been.  "  The  canoe  was  very  small  and  shallow,  so  that 
when  we  were  in,"  it  "  seemed  ready  to  take  in  water, 
which  greatly  terrified  me,  and  caused  me  to  be  very  cir- 
cumspect, sitting  with  my  hands  fast  on  each  side,  my  eyes 
steady,  not  daring  so  much  as  to  lodge  my  tongue  a  hair's 
breadth  more  on  one  side  of  my  mouth  than  t'other,  nor  so 
much  as  think  on  Lot's  wife ;  for  a  wry  thought  would 
have  overset  our  wherry."  l  On  another  day,  as  she  relates, 
the  road  was  furnished  even  worse  than  usual  "  with  ac- 
commodations for  travellers,  so  that  we  were  forced  to 
ride  twenty-two  miles  by  the  post's  account,  but  nearer 
thirty  by  mine,  before  we  could  bait  so  much  as  our  horses, 
which  I  exceedingly  complained  of.  But  the  post  encour- 
aged me  by  saying  we  should  be  well  accommodated  anon 
at  Mr.  Devil's,  a  few  miles  further;  but  I  questioned 
whether  we  ought  to  go  to  the  Devil  to  be  helped  out 
of  affliction.  However,  like  the  rest  of  deluded  souls  that 
post  to  the  infernal  den,  we  made  all  possible  speed  to  this 
Devil's  habitation  ;  where,  alighting  in  full  assurance  of 
good  accommodation,  we  were  going  in ;  but  meeting  his 
two  daughters,  (as  I  supposed,  twins — they  so  nearly  resem- 
bled each  other,  both  in  features  and  habit,  and  looked  as 
old  as  the  Devil  himself,  and  quite  as  ugly,)  we  desired  en- 
tertainment, but  could  hardly  get  a  word  out  of  them,  till 
with  our  importunity  .  .  .  they  called  the  old  sophister ; 
who  was  as  sparing  of  his  words  as  his  daughters  had  been. 
.  .  .  He  differed  only  in  this  from  the  old  fellow  in  t'other 
country — he  let  us  depart.  However,  I  thought  it  proper 
to  warn  poor  travellers  to  endeavor  to  avoid  falling  into 
circumstances  like  ours,  which  at  our  next  stage  I  sat 
down  and  did,  as  followeth  : 

May  all  that  dread  the  cruel  Fiend  of  Night 
Keep  on,  and  not  at  this  curst  mansion  light. 

1  "  Journal."  15-16. 


SAMUEL   SEW  ALL,  99 

Tis  hell ;  'tis  hell ;  and  Devils  here  do  dwell ; 
Here  dwells  the  Devil — surely  this  is  hell. 
Nothing  but  wants — a  drop  to  cool  your  tongue 
Can't  be  procured  these  cruel  fiends  among. 
Plenty  of  horrid  grins,  and  looks  severe, 
Hunger  and  thirst;  but  pity's  banished  here. 
The  right  hand  keep,  if  hell  on  earth  you  fear !"» 


IV. 

A  strong,  gentle,  and  great  man  was  Samuel  Sewall,  great 
by  almost  every  measure  of  greatness, — moral  courage, 
honor,  benevolence,  learning,  eloquence,  intellectual  force 
and  breadth  and  brightness.  Both  his  father  and  his  grand- 
father were  among  the  pioneers  of  New  England  coloniza- 
tion ;  although  his  father,  who  founded  the  town  of  New- 
bury,  Massachusetts,  seems  to  have  passed  and  repassed 
between  England  and  America  without  bringing  hither  his 
wife  and  children,  until  1661,  when  the  boy,  Samuel,  was 
nine  years  old.  This  boy,  destined  to  great  usefulness  and 
distinction  in  the  new  world,  thus  came  to  it  in  time  to 
have  that  personal  shaping  for  his  life  here,  only  to  be  got 
from  early  and  direct  contact  with  it.  He  had  the  usual 
education  of  a  New  England  gentleman  in  those  days.  He 
was  graduated  at  Harvard  College.  He  tried  his  hand 
for  a  time  at  preaching, — a  vocation  for  which  he  was 
well  qualified,  but  from  which  he  was  diverted  into  a  pros- 
perous and  benign  secular  career.  He  became  a  member 
of  the  board  of  assistants,  then  of  the  council,  judge  of 
the  supreme  court,  and  finally  its  chief-justice,  holding  the 
latter  office  until  1728,  two  years  after  which  date  he  died. 
He  was  a  man  built,  every  way,  after  a  large  pattern.  By 
his  great  wealth,  his  great  offices,  his  learning,  his  strong 
sense,  his  wit,  his  warm  human  sympathy,  his  fearlessness, 
his  magnanimity,  he  was  a  visible  potentate  among  men  in 
those  days. 

1  "  Journal,"  25-26. 


100  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  L1TERA  TURE. 

"  Stately  and  slow,  with  thoughtful  air, 
His  black  cap  hiding  his  whitened  hair, 
Walks  the  Judge  of  the  great  Assize, 
Samuel  Sewall,  the  good  and  wise. 
His  face  with  lines  of  firmness  wrought, 
He  wears  the  look  of  a  man  unbought, 
Who  swears  to  his  hurt  and  changes  not; 
Yet  touched  and  softened  nevertheless 
With  the  grace  of  Christian  gentleness  ; 
The  face  that  a  child  would  climb  to  kiss ; 
True  and  tender  and  brave  and  just, 
That  man  might  honor  and  woman  trust."  * 

He  had  the  courage  to  rebuke  the  faults  of  other  people; 
he  had  the  still  greater  courage  to  confess  his  own.  Hav- 
ing, in  1692,  fallen  into  the  witchcraft  snare,  and  having 
from  the  bench  joined  in  the  sentence  of  condemnation 
upon  the  witches,  five  years  later — when  more  light  had 
broken  into  his  mind — he  made  in  church  a  public  con- 
fession of  his  error  and  of  his  sorrow.  The  Indians  of 
Massachusetts  had  then  no  wiser  or  more  generous  friend 
than  he ;  and  he  was,  perhaps,  the  first  of  Americans  to  see 
and  renounce  and  denounce  the  crime  of  negro  slavery  as 
then  practised  in  New  England.  In  1700,  he  spoke  out 
plainly  on  this  subject,  publishing  a  tract  named  "The 
Selling  of  Joseph;""  an  acute,  compact,  powerful  state- 
ment of  the  case  against  American  slavery,  leaving,  in- 
deed, almost  nothing  new  to  be  said  a  century  and  a  half 
afterward,  when  the  sad  thing  came  up  for  final  adjust- 
ment. In  this  pamphlet  one  sees  traces  both  of  his  theologi- 
cal and  of  his  legal  studies ;  it  is  a  lawyer's  brief,  fortified 
by  Scriptural  texts,  and  illuminated  by  lofty  ethical  intu- 
itions. Within  those  three  pages  he  has  left  some  strong 
and  great  words — immortal  and  immutable  aphorisms  of 
equity  :  "  Liberty  is  in  real  value  next  unto  life ;  none 


1  J.  G.  Whittier,  "  Prophecy  of  Samuel  Sewall."     Works,  II.  141. 
8  First  printed  in  a  folio  of  three  pages,  at  Boston,  1700.     Reprinted  in 
Mass.  Hist.  Soc.  Proc.  for  1863-1864,  161-165.     I  quote  from  the  reprint. 


SAMUEL   SEWALL. 


101 


ought  to  part  with  it  themselves  or  deprive  others  of  it, 
but  upon  most  mature  consideration."  *  "  All  men,  as  they 
are  the  sons  of  Adam,  are  co-heirs,  and  have  equal  right 
unto  liberty,  and  all  other  outward  comforts  of  life."  * 
"  Originally  and  naturally  there  is  no  such  thing  as  slave- 
ry." *  "  There  is  no  proportion  between  twenty  pieces  of 
silver  and  liberty."4 

All  his  lifetime  he  made  the  Biblical  prophecies  his  fa- 
vorite study, — a  study  out  of  which  all  manner  of  marvels, 
not  always  edifying,  may  be  educed  upon  occasion ;  and 
the  special  marvel  drawn  from  them  by  this  sagacious 
Puritan  judge  was  their  palpable  predictions  of  America 
as  the  final  "  rendezvous  for  Gog  and  Magog,"  and  as  the 
true  seat  of  the  New  Jerusalem.  In  his  "  Phaenomena 
Quaedam  Apocalyptica ;  ...  or  ...  a  Description  of  the 
New  Heaven  as  it  makes  to  those  who  stand  upon  the 
New  Earth,"  a  book  first  published  in  1697,"  he  unfolds 
this  theory,  going  over  the  applicable  prophecies  clause  by 
clause.  Toward  the  end  of  his  book,  he  replies  to  the 
objections  that  might  be  urged  against  his  doctrine, — one 
of  them  being  that  in  America  the  human  race  inevitably 
deteriorates,  becomes  barren,  dies  off  early.  The  accusa- 
tion he  repels  with  an  affluence  of  facts  illustrating  the 
productiveness  and  longevity  of  the  human  family  here ; 
and  having  done  so,  he  rises  into  this  rhythmical  and 
triumphant  passage,  which  in  its  quaint  melody  of  learned 
phrase,  and  in  a  gentle  humor  that  lurks  and  loses  itself 
in  the  stiff  folds  of  his  own  solemnity,  has  a  suggestion 
of  the  quality  of  Sir  Thomas  Browne  :  "  As  long  as  Plum 
Island  shall  faithfully  keep  the  commanded  post,  notwith- 
standing all  the  hectoring  words  and  hard  blows  of  the 
proud  and  boisterous  oceaq ;  as  long  as  any  salmon  or 
sturgeon  shall  swim  in  the  streams  of  Merrimac,  or  any 
perch  or  pickerel  in  Crane  Pond ;  as  long  as  the  sea-fowl 

1  "  The  Selling  of  Joseph,"  161.  *  Ibid.  161.  *  Ibid.  162. 

4  Ibid.  162.  •  Reprinted,  Boston,  1727. 


IO2  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITER  A  TURE. 

shall  know  the  time  of  their  coming,  and  not  neglect 
seasonably  to  visit  the  places  of  their  acquaintance ;  as 
long  as  any  cattle  shall  be  fed  with  the  grass  growing 
in  the  meadows,  which  do  humbly  bow  down  themselves 
before  Turkey-Hill ;  as  long  as  any  sheep  shall  walk  upon 
Old-Town  Hills,  and  shall  from  thence  pleasantly  look 
down  upon  the  River  Parker,  and  the  fruitful  marshes 
lying  beneath  ;  as  long  as  any  free  and  harmless  doves 
shall  find  a  white  oak  or  other  tree  within  the  township, 
to  perch,  or  feed,  or  build  a  careless  nest  upon,  and  shall 
voluntarily  present  themselves  to  perform  the  office  of 
gleaners  after  barley-harvest ;  as  long  as  Nature  shall  not 
grow  old  and  dote,  but  shall  constantly  remember  to  give 
the  rows  of  Indian  corn  their  education  by  pairs ;  so  long 
shall  Christians  be  born  there,  and  being  first  made  meet, 
shall  from  thence  be  translated  to  be  made  partakers  of 
the  inheritance  of  the  saints  in  light."  ' 

It  gives  still  another  charm  to  the  memory  of  this  prac- 
tical and  hard-headed  mystic  of  New  England,  this  wide- 
souled  and  speculative 

"  Puritan, 
Who  the  halting  step  of  his  age  outran," 

to  discover,  that,  in  a  matter  of  very  serious  concern,  he 
had  the  chivalry  to  come  forward  as  the  champion  of 
woman.  He  tells  us  that  once,  while  "  waiting  upon  a  dear 
child  in  her  last  sickness,"  he  took  up  a  book  to  read.  It 
was  a  book  called  "  The  British  Apollo."  Presently,  his 
eye  fell  upon  a  startling  question,  worded  thus  :  "  Is  there 
now,  or  will  there  be  at  the  resurrection,  any  females  in 
heaven  ;  since  there  seems  to  be  no  need  of  them  there  ?  " 

1  "  Phaenomena,"  etc.  63.  The  reader  will  recall  the  use  of  this  passage 
made  by  Whittier  in  his  delightful  poem,  "  The  Prophecy  of  Samuel  Sewall." 
The  old  Puritan's  prose  in  this  case  is  more  poetic  than  the  poet's  metrical 
paraphrase  of  it.  Whittier  speaks  of  Newbury  as  Sewall's  "native  town  ;" 
but  Sewall  was  born  at  Horton,  England.  He  also  describes  Sewall  as  an 
"  old  man,"  "  propped  on  his  staff  of  age  "  when  he  made  this  prophecy  ;  but 
Sewall  was  then  forty-five  years  old. 


SAMUEL   SEW  ALL. 


103 


Very  likely  he  then  closed  the  book ;  and  there,  by  the 
death-bed  of  his  daughter,  over  whose  resurrection  this 
question  threw  its  cold  shadow,  his  mind  set  to  work  upon 
the  problem  thus  presented ;  and  afterward  he  fully  re- 
solved it,  in  an  essay  bearing  this  delectable  title  :  "  Talitha 
Cumi ;  or,  An  Invitation  to  Women  to  look  after  their  In- 
heritance in  the  Heavenly  Mansions."  He  begins  by  quot- 
ing the  question  that  he  had  met  with  ;  then  he  proceeds  to 
say :  "  This  malapert  question  had  not  patience  to  stay 
for  an  answer,  as  appears  by  the  conclusion  of  it — '  since 
there  seems  to  be  no  need  of  them  there.'  Tis  most  cer- 
tain there  will  be  no  needless,  impertinent  persons  or 
things  in  heaven.  Heaven  is  a  roomy,  a  most  magnificent 
palace,  furnished  with  the  most  rich  and  splendid  enter- 
tainments ;  and  the  noblest  guests  are  invited  to  partake 
of  them.  But  why  should  there  seem  to  be  no  need  of 
women  in  heaven  ?  .  .  .  To  speak  the  truth,  God  has  no 
need  of  any  creature.  His  name  is  exalted  far  above  all 
blessing  and  praise.  But  by  the  same  argument  there  will 
be  no  angels  nor  men  in  heaven,  because  there  is  no  need 
of  them  there."  He  then  discusses,  with  judge-like  care 
and  fulness,  all  the  arguments,  on  both  sides,  that  may  be 
drawn  from  reason,  Scripture,  and  the  ancient  and  mod- 
ern theologians,  reaching  at  last  this  assertion :  "  There 
are  three  women  that  shall  rise  again, — Eve,  the  mother 
of  all  living;  Sarah,  the  mother  of  the  faithful;  and  Mary, 
the  mother  of  our  Lord.  And  if  these  three  rise  again, 
without  doubt  all  will."  In  the  course  of  the  discussion 
he  meets  the  objection  that,  upon  a  certain  branch  of  his 
subject,  "  the  ancients  are  divided  in  their  opinions."  His 
answer  to  this  objection  comes  edged  by  a  flash  of  wit : 
*'  If  we  should  wait  till  all  the  ancients  are  agreed  in  their 
opinions,  neither  men  nor  women  would  ever  get  to 
heaven."  * 


'Selections  from  Sewall  MSS.  Mass.  Hist.  Soc.  Proc.  for  1873,  380-384. 
Other  published  writings  of  Sewall's   are  "Answer  to  Queries  respecting 


IO4 


HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 


V. 


When  Chaucer  visited  the  house  of  the  goddess  Fame, 
he  observed  that  the  outer  gate 

"  so  well  y-corven  was, 
That  never  suche  another  nas  ; 
And  yit  it  was  be  aventure 
Ywrought,  as  often  as  be  cure."  * 

It  is  an  illustration  of  the  caprice  which  everywhere 
prevails  in  the  domain  of  this  goddess,  that  the  one 
American  who,  upon  the  whole,  was  the  most  powerful 
and  brilliant  prose-writer  produced  in  this  country  during 
the  colonial  time,  and  who  in  his  day  enjoyed  a  sovereign 
reputation  in  New  England,  should  have  passed  since 
then  into  utter  obscurity ;  while  several  of  his  contempo- 
raries, particularly  Increase  and  Cotton  Mather,  who  were 
far  inferior  to  him  in  genius,  have  names  that  are  still  re- 
sounding in  our  memories.  This  writer  was  John  Wise, 
born  at  Roxbury,  probably  in  1652  ;  graduated  at  Harvard 
College  in  1673;  and,  from  1680  until  his  death  in  1725, 
minister  of  the  Second  Church  of  Ipswich.  He  had  almost 
every  quality  that  gives  distinction  among  men.  He  was 
of  towering  height,  of  great  muscular  power,  stately  and 
graceful  in  shape  and  movement ;  in  his  advancing  years, 
of  an  aspect  most  venerable.  His  parishioners  long  re- 
membered with  pride  how  a  certain  famous  and  blustering 
hero  from  Andover,  the  mighty  wrestler  of  all  that  region, 
once  came  down  to  Ipswich  for  the  purpose  of  challeng- 
ing their  stalwart  parson  to  a  friendly  trial  of  strength 
at  wrestling ;  and  how  the  parson,  after  much  solicitation, 

America,"  1690  ;  "  Proposals  Touching  Accomplishment  of  Prophecies," 
1713.  Voluminous  manuscripts  of  his,  including  his  diary  for  about  forty 
years,  are  now  in  possession  of  the  Mass.  Hist.  Soc.,  and  are  rich  materials 
for  the  illustration  of  those  times. 

1  Works  of  Chaucer,  Aldine  ed.  V.  248. 


JOHX    WISE.  lOJ 

at  last  reluctantly  consented,  but  had  scarcely  wrapped 
his  arms  in  iron  hug  around  his  antagonist,  when  the  lat- 
ter lay  outstretched  upon  the  earth,  with  his  curiosity 
respecting  the  Reverend  Mr.  Wise  completely  satisfied. 

The  soul  of  this  man  was  of  the  same  large  and  in- 
domitable make.  He  had  a  robust  joy  in  nature  and  in 
human  nature ;  the  creed  of  a  democrat,  without  fear  and 
without  truculence:  to  him  the  griefs  of  the  oppressed 
and  the  aggressions  of  the  oppressor  were  alike  insupport- 
able. In  1687,  when  Sir  Edmund  Andros  sent  down  to 
Ipswich  his  lawless  order  for  a  province-tax,  the  young 
parson  braved  the  tyrant's  anger,  by  advising  his  people 
not  to  comply  with  that  order  ;  for  which  he  was  arrested, 
tried,  deposed  from  the  ministry,  fined,  and  thrown  into 
prison.  In  1689,  when  Sir  Edmund  was  overthrown,  John 
Wise  was  back  again  in  his  parish ;  and,  both  there  and 
in  Boston,  he  was  at  the  front  among  the  bravest,  who 
then  sought  to  prevent  the  recurrence  of  such  despotism, 
by  making  examples  of  the  petty  English  despot  and  of 
his  still  pettier  American  accomplices.  In  1690,  when  the 
new  governor  of  Massachusetts,  Sir  William  Phips,  led 
an  expedition  against  Canada,  John  Wise,  by  request  of 
the  colonial  legislature,  accompanied  him  as  chaplain,  dis- 
tinguishing himself  in  the  campaign  by  feats  of  heroism, 
endurance,  and  military  skill,  as  well  as  by  fidelity  in 
preaching  and  praying. 

Thus  far  in  his  life,  he  had  been  noted  chiefly  for  traits 
of  physical  and  moral  greatness,  a  devout,  benignant,  val- 
iant, and  blameless  manhood;  but  within  a  few  years 
afterward,  there  came  upon  the  country  an  event  that 
made  him  famous  for  the  exertion  of  intellectual  powers, 
both  in  thought  and  speech,  the  most  rugged,  versatile, 
and  splendid. 

In  the  year  1705,  on  the  fifth  of  November — ominous 
day! — there  was  issued  at  Boston  a  very  shrewd  docu- 
ment, without  any  signature  attached,  but  purporting  to 
have  been  framed  by  an  association  of  ministers  in  and 


I06  JflSTOX  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITER  A  TURE. 

near  that  city.  It  was  addressed  to  the  churches  and 
ministers  of  New  England.  It  bore  the  unassuming  title 
of  "  Question  and  Proposals."  Masked  under  deferential 
and  harmless  phrases,  it  was  really  a  project  for  taking 
away  the  power  of  the  laity  in  all  the  churches  of  New 
England,  for  annulling  the  independence  of  each  church, 
and  for  substituting  in  place  of  both  the  will  of  the  clergy. 
The  document  was  understood  to  have  been  the  work  of 
the  two  Mathers,  backed  by  a  coterie  of  clerical  admirers, 
and  representing  an  inclination  widely  cherished,  even  if 
concealed.  The  document  had  a  meek  look,  innocuous, 
even  holy  ;  it  sought  only  the  glory  of  God  and  the  good 
of  man ;  it  was  not  loud,  peremptory,  dogmatic ;  it  only 
asked  and  suggested.  But  John  Wise,  from  his  rural  study 
in  Ipswich,  saw  its  true  character, — a  plot  for  an  ecclesi- 
astical revolution,  and  a  revolution  backward ;  and  having 
given  ample  time  for  the  scheme  to  work  its  way  into 
general  discussion,  at  last  he  lifted  up  his  hand,  and,  at  one 
blow,  crushed  it.  His  blow  was  a  book,  "  The  Churches' 
Quarrel  Espoused,"  published  at  Boston  in  1710, — a  book 
that  by  its  learning,  logic,  sarcasm,  humor,  invective,  its 
consuming  earnestness,  its  vision  of  great  truths,  its  flashes 
of  triumphant  eloquence,  simply  annihilated  the  scheme 
which  it  assailed. 

His  introduction  is  planned  with  exceeding  art  to  con- 
ciliate the  reader,  to  rouse  the  suspicion  of  the  public 
against  the  men  who  had  proposed  the  revolutionary 
scheme,  and  to  confirm  the  popular  conviction  that  the 
order  of  church-government  already  established,  had  upon 
the  whole  worked  satisfactorily  :  "  The  scheme  seems  to  be 
the  spectre  ...  of  Presbyterianism  ;  .  .  .  yet  if  I  don't 
mistake,  in  intention  there  is  something  considerable  of 
Prelacy  in  it.  ...  There  is  also  something  in  it  which 
smells  very  strong  of  the  infallible  chair.  .  .  .  For  the  cler- 
gy to  monopolize  both  the  legislative  and  executive  part 
of  canon  law,  is  but  a  few  steps  from  the  chair  of  universal 
pestilence ;  and  by  the  ladder  here  set  up,  clergymen  may, 


JOHN    WISE.  lO/ 

f  they  please,  clamber  thus  high.  .  .  .  Who  can  limit  their 
power,  or  shorten  their  arm  in  their  executions?  Their 
Bulls  can  now,  upon  any  affront,  bellow  and  thunder  out  a 
thousand  terrible  curses ;  and  the  poor  affrighted  and  en- 
vassaled  laity  .  .  .  must  forfeit  their  salvation,  if  they 
don't  tamely  submit."1 

He  then  takes  up,  one  by  one,  the  several  proposals ;  and 
exposes  the  danger  and  folly  of  each,  with  great  power  of 
logic,  humor,  and  sarcasm.  Thus,  in  commenting  upon 
the  proposed  mode  of  receiving  candidates  into  the  minis- 
try, he  argues  that  it  will  surely  lead  to  the  evils  of  clerical 
corruption  seen  elsewhere :  "  How  oft  is  it  repeated  that 
poor,  sordid,  debauched  wretches  are  put  into  holy  orders, 
whenas  they  were  fitter  to  be  put  into  the  stocks,  or  sent  to 
Bridewell  for  madmen,  than  to  be  sent  with  their  testi- 
monials to  work  in  Christ's  vineyard !  How  long  have  the 
Indies,  the  seas,  the  provinces,  and  many  other  parts  of 
the  empire,  groaned  under  this  damnable  way  of  cheating 
God  of  his  glory  and  the  world  of  salvation !  "* 

It  was,  however,  objected  that  under  the  present  system, 
candidates  often  got  into  the  ministry  too  young.  He  re- 
plies :  "What  then?  ...  If  Christ  be  preached,  all  is 
well.  .  .  .  Despise  not  the  day  of  small  things.  All  men 
must  have  a  beginning,  and  every  bird  which  is  pretty  well 
fledged  must  begin  to  fly.  And  ours  are  not  of  the  nest 
where  Icarus  was  hatched,  whose  feathers  were  only  glued 
on ;  but  these  belong  to  the  angelic  host,  and  their  wings 
grow  out  from  their  essence ;  therefore,  you  may  allow  them 
with  the  lark  now  and  then  to  dart  heavenward,  though  the 
shell  or  down  be  scarce  off  from  their  heads."8 

It  was  urged,  likewise,  that  the  scheme  has  quite  a  harm- 
less look ;  and  in  reply,  he  shows  that,  in  spite  of  that,  it 
involves  the  possibility  of  great  expansion  into  mischief: 
"  Though  it  be  but  a  calf  now,  yet  in  time  it  may  grow — 


1  "  The  Churches'  Quarrel  Espoused,"  38-39. 

•  Ibid.  65.  •  Ibid.  66. 


JO8  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITER  A  TURE. 

being  of  a  thrifty  nature — to  become  a  sturdy  ox  that  will 
know  no  'whoa,'  and,  it  may  be,  past  the  churches'  skill 
then  to  subdue  it.  For  if  I  am  not  much  mistaken,  .  .  . 
that  great  and  terrible  Beast  with  seven  heads  and  ten 
horns  .  .  .  was  nothing  else,  a  few  ages  ago,  but  just  such 
another  calf  as  this  is.  It  was,  indeed,  finely  shaped  and 
of  neat  limbs,  .  .  .  insomuch  that  the  great  potentates  of 
the  earth  were  much  ravished  with  its  aspect  and  features ; 
some  offered  to  suckle  it  on  the  choicest  cows  amongst  all 
the  herds  of  royal  cattle,  .  .  .  hoping  to  stock  their  own 
countries  with  the  breed  ;  and  when  it  was  grown  to  a  con- 
siderable magnitude,  to  render  it  more  shapely  and  fair, 
they  put  iron  tips  on  to  its  horns,  and  beset  its  stupendous 
bulk  with  very  rich  ornaments.  .  .  .  But  alas,  poor  men ! 
they  have  paid  dear  for  their  prodigality  and  fondness  ; 
for  this  very  Creature,  that  was  but  a  calf  when  they  first 
begun  to  feed  it,  is  now  grown  to  be  such  a  mad,  furious, 
and  wild  Bull,  that  there  is  scarce  a  Christian  monarch  on 
earth  .  .  .  — the  best  horseman  or  huntsman  of  them  all — 
that  dare  take  this  Beast  by  the  horns,  when  he  begins  to 
bounce  and  bellow.  Indeed  the  Emperor,  within  these 
few  years,  has  recovered  so  much  courage  that  he  took 
him  by  the  tail,  to  drive  him  out  of  his  royal  granges, 
being  quite  angry  and  weary  with  his  cropping  and  brows- 
ing on  the  flowers  of  his  imperial  crown.  But,  otherwise, 
the  Beast  generally  goes  at  large,  and  does  what  he  will  in 
all  princes'  dominions,  and  keeps  them  in  awe.  Therefore, 
to  conclude,  .  .  .  '  Obsta  principiis  ! '  It  is  wisdom  to  nip 
such  growths  in  the  bud,  and  keep  down  by  early  slaughter 
such  a  breed  of  cattle." 1 

The  document  that  he  is  exposing,  is  dated  "  Novem- 
ber the  fifth."  He  does  not  let  this  incident  slip;  and 
having,  with  wonderful  effectiveness,  developed  his  argu- 
ment that  the  scheme  contained  in  that  document  is  a 
treasonable  conspiracy,  he  proceeds  to  give  the  authors  of 

1  "The  Churches'  Quarrel  Espoused,"  81-82. 


JOHN   WISE.  109 

it  a  terrible  thrust.  Beginning  with  some  "  astrological 
remarks  "  upon  the  document,  he  says :  "  I  find  its  nativ- 
ity full  of  favorable  aspects  to  English  churches.  The  fifth 
day  of  November  has  been  as  a  guardian  angel  to  the 
most  sacred  interest  of  the  empire ;  it  has  rescued  the 
whole  glory  of  church  and  state  from  the  most  fatal  arrest 
of  hell  and  Rome.  .  .  .  Had  I  been  of  the  cabal  .  .  . 
which  formed  these  proposals,  so  soon  as  I  had  seen  .  .  . 
the  date,  ...  I  should  have  cried  out,  '  Miserere  nostri 
Deus,' — the  good  Lord  have  mercy  upon  us.  This  is  the 
4  gun-powder-treason  day  ; '  and  we  are  every  man  ruined, 
being  running  Fawkes's  fate!  Why,  gentlemen,  have  you 
forgot  it?  It  is  the  day  of  the  gun-powder-treason,  and  a 
fatal  day  to  traitors.  ...  I  have  such  an  awe  upon  my 
mind  of  this  very  day,  that  I  have  made  a  settled  resolu- 
tion, that  of  all  the  days  of  the  whole  year,  I  will  never 
conspire  treason  against  my  natural  prince,  nor  mischief 
to  the  churches,  on  the  fifth  day  of  November.  And  so, 
farewell,  gentlemen  ;  for  I  dare  not  join  with  you  in  this 
conspiracy."  '  But  again,  in  the  discussion,  he  returns  to 
this  date,  and  he  addresses  to  it  a  fervid  and  brilliant 
apostrophe :  "  Blessed  !  thrice  blessed  day !  uphold  and 
maintain  thy  matchless  fame  in  the  calendar  of  time ;  and 
let  no  darkness  or  shadow  of  death  stain  thee  ;  let  thy 
horizon  comprehend  whole  constellations  of  favorable  and 
auspicious  stars,  reflecting  a  benign  influence  on  the  Eng- 
lish monarchy;  and  upon  every  return,  in  thy  anniversary 
circuits,  keep  an  indulgent  eye  open  and  wakeful  upon  all 
the  beauties,  from  the  throne  to  the  footstool,  of  that 
mighty  empire !  And  when  it  is  thy  misfortune  to  con- 
ceive a  Monster,  which  may  threaten  any  part  of  the  na- 
tion's glory,  let  it  come  crippled  from  the  womb,  or  else 
travail  in  birth  again,  with  some  noble  hero  or  invincible 
Hercules,  who  may  conquer  and  confound  it."8 
This  noble  passage  is  near  the  victorious  close  of  the 

1  "  The  Churches'  Quarrel  Espoused,"  82.  •  Ibid.  114. 


1 10  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

book ;  and  having  thus  abundantly  implied  the  infamous 
character  of  the  conspiracy,  he  magnanimously  tells  the 
conspirators  themselves  that,  for  the  present,  and  on  their 
good  behavior,  they  are  safe ;  for  he  will  not  reveal  their 
names  :  "  Where  the  place  was,  or  the  persons  who  were 
present  in  this  rendezvous,  shall  never  be  told  by  me,  un- 
less it  be  extorted  by  the  rack.  And  though  I  have  en- 
deavored with  freedom  of  argument  to  subvert  the  error, 
I  will  never  stain  their  personal  glory  by  repeating  or  call- 
ing over  the  muster-roll.  Therefore,  as  Noah's  sons  cast 
a  garment  upon  their  father's  nakedness,  so  ...  their 
names  for  me  shall  repose  under  a  mantle  of  honorable 
pity  and  forgetfulness."  l 

Upon  the  whole,  this  book  has  extraordinary  literary 
merit.  It  is,  of  its  kind,  a  work  of  art ;  it  has  a  beginning, 
a  middle,  and  an  end, — each  part  in  fit  proportion,  and  all 
connected  organically.  The  author  is  expert  in  exciting 
and  in  sustaining  attention  ;  does  not  presume  upon  the 
patience  of  his  readers ;  relieves  the  heaviness  and  dry- 
ness  of  the  argument  by  gayety  and  sarcasm  ;  and  has 
occasional  bursts  of  grand  enthusiasm,  of  majestic  and 
soul-stirring  eloquence.  In  tone  it  is  superior  to  its  time ; 
keen  and  urgent  in  its  reasoning,  showing  no  pity  for  op- 
posing principles,  it  is  full  of  forbearance  and  even  of 
urbanity  for  opposing  persons.  It  is  a  piece  of  triumphant 
logic,  brightened  by  wit,  and  ennobled  by  imagination  ;  a 
master-specimen  of  the  art  of  public  controversy. 

"  The  Churches'  Quarrel  Espoused  "  is  an  exposition  of 
the  theory  of  democracy,  in  the  Christian  church,  but  the 
argument  is  developed  according  to  the  exigencies  of  a 
special  occasion.  In  1717,  seven  years  after  the  publi- 
cation of  that  book,  John  Wise  published  a  systematic 
treatise  upon  the  same  subject,  expounding  in  a  formal 
and  didactic  way  the  principles  of  ecclesiastical  polity 
then  adopted  in  New  England.  He  entitled  this  work, 

1  "  The  Churches'  Quarrel  Espoused,"  115. 


JOHN  WISE.  !U 

'A  Vindication  of  the  Government  of  New  England 
Churches." 

His  theory  of  the  best  government  for  the  church  de- 
rives its  character  from  his  fundamental  ideas  of  what  is 
the  best  government  for  the  state ;  and  the  treatment  of 
the  latter  subject  leads  him  into  a  broad  discussion  of  the 
rights  of  man,  the  nature  of  civil  obligation,  and  the  vari- 
ous forms  of  civil  polity. 

He  first  deals  with  man  in  his  natural  state,  "  as  a  free- 
born  subject  under  the  crown  of  Heaven,  and  owing  hom- 
age to  none  but  God  himself.  .  .  .  He  is  the  favorite 
animal  on  earth,  in  that  this  part  of  God's  image,  namely, 
reason,  is  congenerate  with  his  nature,  wherein  by  a  law 
immutable,  enstamped  upon  his  frame,  God  has  provided 
a  rule  for  men  in  all  their  actions,  obliging  each  one  to 
the  performance  of  that  which  is  right,  .  .  .  the  which  is 
nothing  but  the  dictate  of  right  reason  founded  in  the  soul 
of  man.  .  .  .  The  second  great  immunity  of  man  is  an 
original  liberty  enstamped  upon  his  rational  nature.  ...  I 
shall  waive  the  consideration  of  man's  moral  turpitude, 
but  shall  view  him  "  as  "  the  most  august  animal  in  the 
world.  .  .  .  Whatever  has  happened  since  his  creation,  he 
remains  at  the  upper-end  of  nature."  Man's  natural  liberty 
consists  in  three  things :  first,  man  has  "  a  faculty  of  doing 
or  omitting  things  according  to  the  direction  of  his  judg- 
ment ; "  second,  "  every  man  must  be  conceived  to  be 
perfectly  in  his  own  power  and  disposal,  and  not  to  be 
controlled  by  the  authority  of  any  other ;  "  third,  there  is 
"  an  equality  amongst  men,  which  is  ...  to  be  cherished 
and  preserved  to  the  highest  degree,  as  will  consist  with 
all  just  distinctions  amongst  men  of  honor,  and  shall  be 
agreeable  with  the  public  good.  For  man  has  a  high 
valuation  of  himself,  and  the  passion  seems  to  lay  its  first 
foundation,  not  in  pride,  but  really  in  the  high  and  admi- 
rable frame  and  constitution  of  human  nature.  .  .  .  Since, 
then,  human  nature  agrees  equally  with  all  persons,  and 
since  no  one  can  live  a  sociable  life  with  another  that  does 


I  1 2  HIS  TOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITER  A  TURE. 

not  own  and  respect  him  as  a  man,  it  follows  as  a  com- 
mand of  the  law  of  nature,  that  every  man  esteem  and 
treat  another  as  one  who  is  naturally  his  equal,  or  who  is 
a  man  as  well  as  he.  .  .  .  The  noblest  mortal  in  his  en- 
trance on  the  stage  of  life  is  not  distinguished  by  any 
pomp  .  .  .  from  the  lowest  of  mankind ;  and  our  life 
hastens  to  the  same  general  mark.  Death  observes  no 
ceremony,  but  knocks  as  loud  at  the  barriers  of  the  court 
as  at  the  door  of  the  cottage.  .  .  .  Nature  having  set  all 
men  upon  a  level  and  made  them  equals,  no  servitude  or 
subjection  can  be  conceived  without  inequality,  and  this 
cannot  be  made  without  usurpation  in  others,  or  voluntary 
compliance  in  those  who  resign  their  freedom  and  give 
away  their  degree  of  natural  being."  l 

In  treating  of  man  in  a  civil  state,  he  shows  that  "  the 
true  and  leading  cause  of  forming  governments  and  yield- 
ing up  natural  liberty,  and  throwing  man's  equality  into  a 
common  pile  .  .  .  was  ...  to  guard  themselves  against 
the  injuries  men  were  liable  to  interchangeably ;  for  none 
so  good  to  man  as  man,  and  yet  none  a  greater  enemy 
So  that  the  first  .  .  .  original  of  civil  power  is  the  people. 
.  .  .  The  formal  reason  of  government  is  the  will  of  a  com- 
munity, yielded  up  and  surrendered  to  some  other  subject, 
either  of  one  particular  person  or  more."2  He,  then, 
speaks  of  "  the  three  forms  of  a  regular  state," — democ- 
racy, aristocracy,  and  monarchy;  and  of  the  first  he  says: 
"  This  form  of  government  appears  in  the  greatest  part  of 
the  world  to  have  been  the  most  ancient.  .  .  .  Reason 
seems  to  show  it  to  be  most  probable  that  when  men  .  .  . 
had  thoughts  of  joining  in  a  civil  body,  they  would  with- 
out question  be  inclined  to  administer  their  common  af- 
fairs by  their  common  judgment,  and  so  must  necessarily 
.  .  .  establish  a  democracy."8 

Having  thus  spoken  of  each  of  these  civil  forms,  he 
next  deals  with  their  analogous  forms  in  church  organiza- 

1  "  A  Vindication,"  etc.  32-43.  *  Ibid.  43-44.  8  Ibid.  47. 


JOHN  WISE.  H3 

tion.  He  begins  with  the  ecclesiastical  monarchy,  and  of 
course  finds  this  embodied  in  the  Papacy:  "  It  is  certain 
his  Holiness,  either  by  reasonable  pleas  or  powerful  cheats, 
has  assumed  an  absolute  and  universal  sovereignty  ;  this 
fills  his  cathedral  chair,  and  is  adorned  with  a  triple 
crown."  His  claim  is  that  "the  Almighty  has  made  him 
both  key-keeper  of  heaven  and  hell,  with  the  adjacent 
territories  of  purgatory,  and  vested  in  him  an  absolute 
sovereignty  over  the  Christian  world.  .  .  .  He  therefore 
decks  himself  with  the  spoils  of  the  divine  attributes, 
styling  himself,  Our  Lord  God, '  Optimum,  maximum,  et 
supremum  numen  in  terris ; '  a  God  on  earth,  a  visible 
Deity,  and  that  his  power  is  absolute,  and  his  wisdom  in- 
fallible. And  many  of  the  great  potentates  of  the  earth 
have  paid  their  fealty  as  though  it  was  really  so.  ... 
He  has  placed  his  holy  foot  on  the  monarch's  profane 
neck,  as  crushing  a  vermin  crawling  out  of  the  stable  of 
his  sovereignty ;  and  others  very  frequently  kiss  his  toes 
with  very  profound  devotion.  .  .  .  But  the  sad  inquiry  is, 
whether  this  sort  of  government  has  not  plainly  subverted 
the  design  of  the  gospel,  and  the  end  for  which  Christ's 
government  was  ordained,  namely,  the  moral,  spiritual,  and 
eternal  happiness  of  men.  But  I  have  no  occasion  to  pur- 
sue this  remark  with  tedious  demonstrations.  It  is  very 
plain ;  it  is  written  with  blood  in  capital  letters,  to  be  read 
at  midnight  by  the  flames  of  Smithfield  and  other  such 
like  consecrated  fires, — that  the  government  of  this  eccle- 
siastical monarch  has,  instead  of  sanctifying,  absolutely 
debauched  the  world,  and  subverted  all  good  Christianity 
in  it.  ...  Without  the  least  show  of  any  vain  presump- 
tion, we  may  infer  that  God  and  wise  Nature  were  never 
propitious  to  the  birth  of  this  Monster."1 

As  regards  the  aristocratic  form  of  church  government, 
which  he  finds  embodied  in  the  Episcopacy,  he  thinks  that 
Christianity  "  has  been  peeled,  robbed,  and  spoiled  "  by  it 

1  "Vindication,"  etc.  54-56. 
VOL.  n. — 8 


"4 


HISTORY  OF  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 


— "  so  doleful  a  contemplation  is  it  to  think  the  world 
should  be  destroyed  by  those  men  who  by  God  were  or- 
dained to  save  it." l 

He  then  comes  to  the  ecclesiastical  democracy,  and 
of  course  advocates  it,  doing  so  with  calm,  rational,  and 
powerful  arguments :  "  This  is  a  form  of  government  which 
the  light  of  nature  does  highly  value,  and  often  directs  to, 
as  most  agreeable  to  the  just  and  natural  prerogatives  of 
human  beings."2 

Throughout  this  entire  work,  the  author  shows  abundant 
learning ;  but  always  he  is  the  master  of  his  learning,  and 
not  its  victim.  He  lays  out  his  propositions  clearly  and 
powerfully;  marshals  his  arguments  with  tact  and  effect; 
is  nowhere  freakish,  or  extravagant ;  never  fails  in  good 
temper,  or  in  good  sense. 

Upon  the  whole,  no  other  American  author  of  the  colo- 
nial time  is  the  equal  of  John  Wise  in  the  union  of  great 
breadth  and  power  of  thought  with  great  splendor  of  style ; 
and  he  stands  almost  alone  among  our  early  writers  for  the 
blending  of  a  racy  and  dainty  humor  with  impassioned 
earnestness. 

His  force  and  brilliance  in  statement  cannot  be  fully  rep- 
resented in  sentences  torn  from  their  connection ;  yet  on 
almost  every  page  one  meets  terse  and  quotable  sayings, 
here  and  there  long  passages  grand  for  their  nobility  of  feel- 
ing, their  truth,  and  the  music  of  their  words.  "  Order," 
says  he,  "  is  both  the  beauty  and  safety  of  the  universe. 
Take  away  the  decorum  whereby  the  whole  hangs  together, 
the  great  frame  of  nature  is  unpinned,  and  drops  piece 
from  piece;  and  out  of  a  beautiful  structure  we  have  a 
chaos."8  "If  men  are  trusted  with  duty,"  he  exclaims, 
"they  must  trust  that,  and  not  events.  If  men  are  placed 
at  helm  to  steer  in  all  weather  that  blows,  they  must  not 
be  afraid  of  the  waves  or  a  wet  coat."4 


1  "Vindication,"  etc.  59-60.  *  Ibid.  60. 

1  "  The  Churches'  Quarrel  Espoused,"  40.  4  Ibid.  53. 


JOHN   WISE.  Hj 

Here  is  his  stately  and  passionate  chant  of  homage  to 
religion :  "  Religion,  in  its  infallible  original,  the  wisdom 
and  authority  of  God;  in  its  Infinite  Object,  the  ineffable 
Persons  and  Perfections  of  the  Divine  Essence  ;  in  its 
means,  the  gospel  of  salvation ;  in  its  inspired  wakeful  and 
capacious  ministry ;  in  its  subject,  the  inestimable  immortal 
soul  of  man ;  in  its  transcendent  effects,  in  time  the  charm- 
ing peace  and  joys  of  conscience,  in  eternity  the  joyful  re- 
treat and  shouts  of  glory ; — is  the  most  incomparable  gift  of 
Palladium  which  ever  came  from  heaven.  Amongst  all  the 
favors  of  the  Father  of  Lights,  there  is  none  parallel  with 
this ;  when  disclosed  in  its  beauty,  it  ravisheth  all  the  in- 
tellects of  the  universe ;  and  challenge  may  be  made  that 
the  prerogatives  and  glory  belonging  to  all  the  crowned 
heads  in  the  world,  do  bow  and  wait  upon  its  processions 
through  the  earth,  to  guard  it  from  its  innumerable  and 
inveterate  enemies.  ...  It  is  certain  that  the  church  of 
Christ  is  the  pillar  of  truth,  or  sacred  recluse  and  peculiar 
asylum  of  Religion  ;  and  this  sacred  guest,  Religion,  which 
came  in  the  world's  infancy  from  heaven  to  gratify  the  soli- 
tudes of  miserable  man,  when  God  had  left  him,  hath  long 
kept  house  with  us  in  this  land,  to  sweeten  our  wilderness- 
state;  and  the  renowned  churches  here  are  her  sacred  pal- 
aces. Then,  certainly,  it  is  not  fair  for  her  lovers,  under 
pretence  of  maintaining  her  welcome  in  greater  state,  to 
desolate  her  pleasing  habitations,  though  they  stand  some- 
what low  like  the  myrtle  grove."  l 

Perhaps  even  greater  than  the  distinction  he  deserves  for 
his  brilliant  writing,  is  the  distinction  due  him  for  the  pro- 
phetic clearness,  the  courage,  and  the  inapproachable  abil- 
ity with  which,  in  that  unfriendly  time,  he,  almost  alone 
among  Americans,  avowed  his  belief  in  civil  governments 
founded  on  the  idea  of  human  equality.  He  was  the  first 
great  American  democrat.  In  the  earlier  years  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  he  announced  the  political  ideas  that, 

1  "  The  Churches'  Quarrel  Espoused,"  75-76. 


I  1 6  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITER  A  TURE. 

fifty  years  later,  took  immortal  form  under  the  pen  ot 
Thomas  Jefferson.  Indeed,  in  1772,  when  the  doctrine  of 
human  right  had  come  to  be  a  very  urgent  and  very  prac- 
tical one  among  men,  the  two  books  of  John  Wise  were 
called  for  in  Boston  by  the  Revolutionary  leaders  ;  they 
were  reprinted  in  response  to  this  call ;  and  they  proved 
an  armory  of  burnished  weapons  in  all  that  stern  fight. 
"The  end  of  all  good  government  is  to  cultivate  humanity 
and  promote  the  happiness  of  all,  and  the  good  of  every 
man  in  all  his  rights,  his  life,  liberty,  estate,  honor,  and  so 
forth,  without  injury  or  abuse  to  any."  '  No  wonder  that 
the  writer  of  that  sentence  was  called  up  from  his  grave, 
by  the  men  who  were  getting  ready  for  the  Declaration  of 
Independence! 

VI. 

Not  long  before  the  Revolutionary  War,  a  distinguished 
clergyman  of  Boston,  Charles  Chauncey,  then  an  aged 
man,  said,  in  a  letter  to  President  Stiles,  that  of  all  the 
eminent  men  he  had  known  in  New  England,  Jeremiah 
Dummer  was  "  for  extent  and  strength  of  genius  "  one  of 
the  three  greatest.  By  all  contemporary  allusions  it  is 
evident  that  this  man  was  regarded  in  his  day  as  having 
extraordinary  ability.  Certainly  no  other  American  of 
that  period  began  life  with  more  brilliant  promise ;  per- 
haps none  ended  it  under  sadder  disappointment.  He  was 
born  in  Boston  about  1679,  of  a  family  prominent  and 
honorable  in  the  country  from  its  earliest  settlement.  He 
was  graduated  at  Harvard  College  in  1699,  where  his 
student-life  was  long  perpetuated  in  splendid  tradition. 
Being  at  that  time  of  a  singularly  devout  spirit,  he  chose 
theology  for  his  profession,  and  entered  upon  the  study 
of  it  with  his  usual  ardor  and  thoroughness.  He  soon 
went  abroad  for  larger  opportunities  of  instruction,  taking 

1  "  Vindication,"  etc.  42. 


JEREMIAH  DUMMER.  H7 

his  doctor's  degree  at  the  University  of  Utrecht;1  and 
upon  his  return  to  New  England,  probably  in  1704,  he 
brought  with  him  testimonials  to  his  industry  and  blame- 
less life  while  in  Europe.  To  his  friends  and  to  himself 
he  now  probably  seemed  fully  ripe  for  the  illustrious  ser- 
vice among  the  churches  of  New  England  to  which  he  had 
been  destined.  He  began  to  preach  in  the  pulpits  of 
Boston  ;  but  somehow,  in  spite  of  all  his  genius  and  all 
his  vast  academic  preparation,  his  preaching  did  not  make 
any  impression.  It  was  without  fault,  and  without  effect. 
Thus,  on  the  twenty-ninth  of  October,  1704,  he  preached 
"  A  Discourse  on  the  Holiness  of  the  Sabbath  Day."  It 
was  immaculate  for  orthodoxy,  fitting  even  the  most  asce- 
trc  Puritan  variety  of  that  article ;  it  had  an  abundance  of 
Biblical,  theological,  and  classical  learning  in  it ;  it  was 
smooth  and  liquid  in  style ;  indeed,  it  had  nearly  every 
quality  of  a  speech,  except  fitness  for  being  spoken.  It 
was  simply  a  labored  literary  essay,  quite  too  bookish, 
ornate,  and  fine  to  have  any  practical  effect  either  on 
saints  or  sinners.  The  sermon,  however,  was  at  once 
published,2  under  the  high  sanction  of  the  venerable  In- 
crease Mather,  who,  in  the  preface,  spoke  of  Dummer's 
unequalled  success  as  a  student  at  home  and  abroad,  and 
of  his  personal  excellence  in  creed  and  deed,  but  concluded 
with  the  alarming  intimation  that  unless  the  churches  of 
New  England  should  make  haste  to  possess  themselves 
of  this  clerical  prodigy,  he  would  be  very  likely  to  with- 
draw into  some  other  quarter  of  the  universe. 

The  menace  was  unheeded.  Dummer  preached  here  and 
there  for  a  time,  but  found  no  acceptable  pulpit  to  which 
he  was  acceptable ;  and  at  last  he  gave  up  the  quest. 
Five  years  later,  1709,  he  once  more  emerged  into  view. 
This  time  it  was  in  London,  in  a  new  character,  on  a  new 

1  In  the  Prince  Library  are  copies  of  four  of  his  university  theses,  in  Latin, 
printed  in  Holland  in  1702  and  1703,  and  showing  his  minute  and  large  ac- 
quisitions in  philological  and  theological  learning. 

'  Republished,  Boston,  1763. 


1 1  g  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITER  A  TURE. 

theme.  He  had  dropped  his  theological  profession,  and 
his  theology,  and,  very  likely,  his  religion ;  he  had  gone  to 
England  to  be  a  politician,  and  to  make  for  himself  there 
a  great  career  in  secular  life.  He  had  arrived  not  long 
before  the  formation  of  the  Tory  ministry  under  Har- 
ley  and  St.  John ;  and  to  the  anguish  of  his  friends  in 
America,  he  soon  allied  himself  with  the  latter  powerful 
and  profligate  statesman  ;  adopted  his  politics,  and  even 
his  morals ;  served  him  in  various  secret  negotiations ;  and 
had  from  him  promises  of  high  promotion.  But,  in  1714, 
the  Queen  died  ;  Bolingbroke  fled  in  disgrace  to  France ; 
and  poor  Dummer,  damned  by  such  an  alliance,  found  all 
his  hopes  of  a  political  career  in  England  blasted.1  It  was 
impossible  for  him  to  confess  his  failure  by  a  return  to  his 
native  land ;  and  in  England  he  remained  during  the  rest 
of  his  days,  becoming  a  member  of  the  Middle  Temple, 
and  indulging  in  certain  respectable  laxities  of  conduct 
more  suggestive  of  his  later  friends  than  of  his  earlier  ones  ; 
at  last,  in  1739,  he  died,  without  ever  grasping  any  of 
that  glory  in  the  world  for  which  he  had  so  laboriously 
qualified  himself,  almost  unknown  in  the  country  which 
he  had  adopted,  and  long  before  forgotten  in  the  country 
in  which  he  was  born. 

Yet  on  behalf  of  Jeremiah  Dummer  it  remains  to  be 
said,  that  whatever  else,  of  true  and  good,  he  may  have 
given  up  when  he  turned  his  back  upon  his  own  country, 
he  never  gave  up  his  love  for  that  country,  or  his  passion 
to  promote  her  welfare  by  his  best  labors.  From  1710  to 
1721,  he  served  Massachusetts  as  its  agent  in  London; 
and  when  that  office  was  taken  from  him,  he  continued 
to  serve  her  still,  without  appointment  and  without  pay, 
whenever  he  found  occasion.  However  much  of  an  Eng- 
lishman he  may  have  become,  he  never  ceased  to  be  an 
American.  Whatever  he  wrote  for  the  public,  is  upon 
American  topics ;  and  his  letters  to  his  friends  in  this 

1  T.  Hutchinson,  "  Hist.  Mass.  Bay,"  II.  170,  note. 


JEREMIAH  DUMMER.  ng 

country  showed  at  times  a  pensive  and  affectionate  regret 
for  the  land  and  the  life  that  he  could  never  return  to. 

His  memory  as  a  writer  will  rest  upon  two  publications, 
both  being  proofs  not  only  of  his  fine  literary  accomplish- 
ments, but  of  his  vigilant  and  laborious  zeal  for  his  coun- 
try. The  first  was  printed,  in  London,  in  1709,*  and  is 
entitled,  "A  Letter  to  a  Noble  Lord  concerning  the  late 
Expedition  to  Canada,"  wherein  he  makes  three  points: 
first, that  the  conquest  of  Canada  was  of  great  importance 
to  England ;  second,  that  the  late  expedition  was  wisely 
planned  ;  third,  that  its  failure  cannot  be  charged  upon 
New  England.  It  is  an  able  and  convincing  essay,  writ- 
ten in  urbane  and  graceful  style,  everywhere  bright  and 
readable.  It  contains  some  striking  illustrations  of  the 
adroitness  with  which  the  French  missionaries  in  Canada 
aided  the  political  designs  of  France  ;  for  instance,  teach- 
ing their  Indian  converts  that  "  the  Virgin  Mary  was  a 
French  lady,  and  that  her  Son,  the  Saviour  of  the  world, 
was  crucified  by  the  English."  The  book  also  denotes 
how  early  and  passionate  among  the  English  colonies  in 
America  was  the  dread  of  the  American  power  of  France ; 
thus,  even  in  1709,  he  says  that  those  colonies  can  never 
be  easy  or  happy  "  whilst  the  French  are  masters  of 
Canada."* 

But  the  second  of  Bummer's  political  publications  is 
much  the  abler:  "A  Defence  of  the  New  England  Char- 
ters." It  was  published  in  London  in  I728,8  at  a  time 
when  there  was  danger  of  a  bill  passing  the  House  of  Com- 
mons, annulling  the  charters  granted  to  the  New  England 
colonies.  It  opens  with  a  fine  sketch  of  the  origin  and 
growth  of  those  colonies,  and  of  the  circumstances  under 
which  the  charters  were  given  to  them ;  and  then  proceeds 
to  establish  these  four  propositions :  first,  that  the  charter- 
governments  have  a  good  right  to  their  charters ;  second, 

1  Reprinted,  Boston,  1712.  *  "  A  Letter  to  a  Noble  Lord,"  etc.  4. 

1  Republished  in  London  by  J.  Almon,  in  1766,  on  account  of  its  perti- 
ncncc  to  colonial  topics  then  under  discussion. 


1 20  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

that  they  have  not  forfeited  them ;  third,  that  if  they  had 
it  would  not  be  the  interest  of  the  crown  to  accept  the  for- 
feitures; and,  fourth,  that  it  is  inconsistent  with  justice  to 
disfranchise  the  charter-colonies  by  act  of  parliament.  It 
is  an  admirable  specimen  of  argumentative  literature  ;  strict 
in  logic,  strong  in  fact,  clear,  flowing,  graceful,  occasionally 
rising  into  noble  enthusiasm,  but  always  temperate,  cour- 
teous, and  cosmopolitan. 

VII. 

No  one  who  would  penetrate  to  the  core  of  early  Amer- 
ican literature,  and  would  read  in  it  the  secret  history  of 
the  people  in  whose  minds  it  took  root  and  from  whose 
minds  it  grew,  may  by  any  means  turn  away,  in  lofty  liter- 
ary scorn,  from  the  almanac, — most  despised,  most  prolific, 
most  indispensable  of  books,  which  every  man  uses,  and  no 
man  praises ;  the  very  quack,  clown,  pack-horse,  and  pariah 
of  modern  literature,  yet  the  one  universal  book  of  modern 
literature;  the  supreme  and  only  literary  necessity  even  in 
households  where  the  Bible  and  the  newspaper  are  still  un- 
desired  or  unattainable  luxuries. 

The  earliest  record  of  this  species  of  literature  in  America 
carries  us  back  to  the  very  beginning  of  printed  literature 
in  America;  for,  next  after  a  sheet  containing  "The  Free- 
man's Oath,"  the  first  production  that  came  from  the 
printing-press  in  this  country  was  "An  Almanac  calculated 
for  New  England,  by  Mr.  Pierce,"  and  printed  by  Stephen 
Daye,  at  Cambridge,  in  I639.1  Thenceforward  for  a  long 
time,  scarcely  a  year  passed  over  that  solitary  printing- 
press  at  Cambridge,  without  receiving  a  similar  salute  from 
it.  In  1676,  Boston  itself  grew  wise  enough  to  produce 
an  almanac  of  its  own.  Ten  years  afterward,  Philadelphia 
began  to  send  forth  almanacs — a  trade  in  which,  in  the 
following  century,  it  was  to  acquire  special  glory.  In 

1  I.  Thomas,  "Hist,  of  Printing  in  Am."  I.  46. 


THE  ALMANAC.  !2I 

1697,  New  York  entered  the  same  enticing  field  of  enter- 
prise.  The  first  almanac  produced  in  Rhode  Island,  was 
in  1728;  the  first  almanac  produced  in  Virginia,  was  in 
1 73 1.1  In  1733,  Benjamin  Franklin  began  to  publish  what 
he  called  "  Poor  Richard's  Almanac,"  to  which  his  own 
personal  reputation  has  given  a  celebrity  surpassing  that 
of  all  other  almanacs  published  anywhere  in  the  world. 
Thus,  year  by  year,  with  the  multiplication  of  people  and 
of  printing-presses  in  this  country,  was  there  a  multiplica- 
tion of  almanacs,  some  of  them  being  of  remarkable  intel 
lectual  and  even  literary  merit.  From  the  first,  they  con- 
tained many  of  the  traits  that  had  become  conventional 
in  printed  almanacs  in  Europe,  ever  since  their  first  pub- 
lication there  in  the  fifteenth  century;  particularly  astro- 
logical prophecies,  or,  as  they  were  called,  "prognostica- 
tions," relating  both  to  mankind  and  to  the  weather,  and 
representing  the  traditional  belief  in  the  influence  of  the 
heavenly  bodies  upon  mundane  affairs.  Gradually,  to  these 
were  added  other  things, — scraps  of  wisdom,  crumbs  of 
history,  snatches  of  verse,  proverbs,  jests,  all  scattered 
through  the  little  book  according  to  the  convenience  of  the 
printer  and  the  supposed  benefit  of  the  reader.  Through- 
out our  colonial  time,  when  larger  books  were  costly  and 
few,  the  almanac  had  everywhere  a  hearty  welcome  and 
frequent  perusal ;  the  successive  numbers  of  it  were  care- 
fully preserved  year  after  year;  their  margins  and  blank 
pages  were  often  covered  over  with  annotations,  domestic 
and  otherwise.  Thus,  John  Cotton,  it  will  be  remembered, 
used  the  blank  spaces  in  his  almanacs  as  depositories  for 
hi$  stealthy  attempts  at  verse.  So,  also,  the  historian, 
Thomas  Prince,  recorded  in  his  almanacs  the  state  of  his 
accounts  with  his  hair-dresser  and  wig-maker.  A  writer 
of  some  note,2  born  in  Connecticut  during  the  American 
Revolution,  has  left  a  vivid  description  of  his  own  excite- 

1  For  several  of  the  above  dates  I  depend  upon  Ainsworth  R.  Spofford,  in 
"Am.  Almanac"  for  1878,  23-25. 
"Joseph  T.  Buckingham,  '•  Personal  Memoirs,"  etc.  I.  2O. 


1 22  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN-  LITER  A  TURE. 

ment,  as  a  child,  in  reading  again  and  again  the  literary 
treasures  of  the  household,  consisting,  in  large  part,  of  a 
file  of  almanacs  for  fifty  years. 

One  of  the  numerous  myths  still  prevailing  in  the  world 
with  reference  to  Benjamin  Franklin,  describes  him  as  the 
first  founder  of  an  almanac  blending  those  qualities  of 
shrewd  instruction  and  keen  mother-wit,  that  are  to  be 
seen  in  his  famous  series  ;  a  French  encyclopaedist,  for  ex- 
ample, declaring  that  Franklin  "  put  forth  the  first  popu- 
lar almanac  which  spoke  the  language  of  reason."  *  In 
truth,  much  of  the  wisdom  and  wit  introduced  by  Frank- 
lin into  his  almanac  was  borrowed  from  Bacon,  Rabelais, 
Rochefoucauld,  Steele,  Swift,  De  Foe,  and  others:2  but 
even  the  idea  of  introducing  into  an  almanac  wit  and  wis- 
dom whether  original  or  borrowed,  had  been  thought  of 
and  put  into  practice  before  Franklin's  "  Poor  Richard  " 
was  born.  In  1728,  five  years  before  that  event,  Franklin's 
brother,  James,  sent  forth  the  first  number  of  "  The  Rhode 
Island  Almanac  ;  "  and  in  its  pages,  year  by  year,  one  may 
find  no  little  of  that  sagacity,  humor,  and  knack  of  phrase, 
that  did  so  much  for  the  fortunes  of  his  own  runaway  ap- 
prentice. But  even  three  years  before  James  Franklin's 
almanac  appeared,  Nathaniel  Ames,3  a  physician  and  inn- 
keeper of  Dedham,  Massachusetts,  a  man  of  original,  vig- 
orous, and  pungent  genius,  began  the  publication  of  his 
"  Astronomical  Diary  and  Almanac  ;  "  which  he  continued 
to  publish  till  his  death  in  1764;  which,  under  his  manage- 
ment, acquired  an  enormous  popularity  throughout  New 
England  ;  and  which,  from  the  first,  contained  in  high  per- 
fection every  type  of  excellence  afterward  illustrated  in 
the  almanac  of  Benjamin  Franklin.  Indeed,  Ames's  alma- 
nac was  in  most  respects  better  than  Franklin's,  and  was, 
probably,  the  most  pleasing  representative  we  have  of  a 

1  "  Am.  Almanac,"  for  1878,  25. 

s  A  delightful  account  of  ' '  Poor  Richard's  Almanac  "  is  in  James  Parton's 
"  Life  and  Times  of  Benjamin  Franklin,"  I.  227—240. 
*  He  was  the  father  of  the  celebrated  orator  and  statesman,  Fisher  Ames. 


NATHANIEL  AMES. 


123 


form  of  literature  that  furnished  so  much  entertainment  to 
our  ancestors,  and  that  preserves  for  us  so  many  charac- 
teristic tints  of  their  life  and  thought. 

Nathaniel  Ames  made  his  almanac  a  sort  of  annual 
cyclopaedia  of  information  and  amusement, — a  vehicle  for 
the  conveyance  to  the  public  of  all  sorts  of  knowledge 
and  nonsense,  in  prose  and  verse,  from  literature,  history 
and  his  own  mind,  all  presented  with  brevity,  variety,  and 
infallible  tact.  He  had  the  instinct  of  a  journalist ;  and, 
under  a  guise  that  was  half-frolicsome,  the  sincerity  and 
benignant  passion  of  a  public  educator.  He  carried  into 
the  furthest  wildernesses  of  New  England  some  of  the  best 
English  literature ;  pronouncing  there,  perhaps  for  the 
first  time,  the  names  of  Addison,  Thomson,  Pope,  Dryden, 
Butler,  Milton ;  and  repeating  there  choice  fragments  of 
what  they  had  written.  Thus,  eight  years  before  Benja- 
min Franklin  had  started  his  almanac,  Nathaniel  Ames 
was  publishing  one  that  had  all  of  its  best  qualities, — fact 
and  frolic,  the  wisdom  of  the  preacher  without  his  solem- 
nity, terse  sayings,  shrewdness,  wit,  homely  wisdom,  all 
sparkling  in  piquant  phrase. 

As  the  public  expected  the  almanac-maker  to  be  a 
prophet,  Nathaniel  Ames  gratified  the  public ;  and  he 
freely  predicted  future  events,  but  always  with  a  merry 
twinkle  in  his  eye,  and  always  ready  to  laugh  the  loudest 
at  his  own  failure  to  predict  them  aright.  He  mixes,  in 
delightful  juxtaposition,  absurd  prognostications,  curt  jests, 
and  aphorisms  of  profound  wisdom,  the  whole  forming  a 
miscellany  even  now  extremely  readable,  and  sure,  at  that 
time,  to  raise  shouts  of  laughter  around  thousands  of  fire- 
places where  food  for  laughter  was  much  needed.  Thus, 

January  I.     "  About  the  beginning  of  the  year  expect  plenty  of  rain 

or  snow. " 

"  Warm  and  clears  off  cold  again." 
May  22.     "  Some  materials  about  this  time  are  hatched  for  the  clergy 

to  debate  on." 
October  21.     "He  that  lives  by  fraud  is  in  danger  of  dying  a  knave." 


1 24  HISTOR  Y  CF  AMERICAN  LITER  A  TURE. 

November  9.   "  These  aspects  show  violent  winds  and  in  winter  storms 
of  driving  snow  ;  mischiefs  by  Indians,  if  no  peace  ;  and  among 
us,  feuds,  quarrels,  bloody-noses,  broken  pates — if  not  necks." 
November  24.     "  If  there  was  less  debating  and  more  acting,  'twould 

be  better  times." 
December  7-10.     "  Ladies,  take  heed, 

Lay  down  your  fans, 
And  handle  well 

Your  warming-pans.'' 
December  15-18.  "  This  cold,  uncomfortable  weather 

Makes  Jack  and  Gill  lie  close  together." 
December  20-22.  "  The  lawyers'  tongues — they  never  freeze, 
If  warmed  with  honest  clients'  fees."J 

Having  been  laughed  at  for  his  false  predictions,  he  uses 
the  almanac  for  1729  to  join  in  the  laugh,  and  to  turn 
the  occasion  of  it  into  a  witty  and  instructive  home-thrust 
at  every  reader : 

"  Man  was  at  first  a  perfect,  upright  creature, 
The  lively  image  of  his  great  Creator. 
When  Adam  fell,  all  men  in  him  transgressed ; 
And  since  that  time  they  err  that  are  the  best. 
The  printer  errs;  I  err, — much  like  the  rest. 
Welcome's  that  man  for  to  complain  of  me, 
Whose  self  and  works  are  quite  from  errors  free." 

Sometimes,  in  a  more  serious  tone,  he  gives  his  real 
opinion  about  this  traditional  department  of  the  almanac, 
and  helps  to  lift  his  readers  above  the  demand  for  it  :  "  He 
who  has  foreordained  whatsoever  comes  to  pass,  knows, 
and  he  only  knows  with  absolute  certainty,  what  will  come 
to  pass.  The  Book  of  Fate  is  hid  from  all  created  beings. 
.  .  .  Indeed,  the  Devil  does  not  know  so  much  of  future 
events,  as  many  expect  an  almanac-maker  should  foretell ; 
although  it  must  be  owned  that  they  are  willing  to  allow 
him  the  help  of  the  Devil  for  his  information." z 

But  everywhere  it  is  plain  enough  that  the  author  wears 

1  Almanac  for  1749.  *  Almanac  for  1763. 


NATHANIEL  AMES. 


125 


his  mask  of  jester,  only  to  hide  a  most  earnest  and  friendly 
face ;  and  having  by  his  mirth  gained  admission  to  every 
New  England  cabin,  he  sits  down  with  the  family  around 
the  great  crackling  fire,  and  helps  them  to  a  wisdom  that 
will  enable  them  to  keep  on  laughing.  Thus,  in  the  almanac 
for  1754,  he  has  a  preliminary  address  to  the  reader,  uttered 
in  the  tone  of  a  Cobbett  or  a  Greeley, — a  born  tribune  of 
the  people :  "  I  have  filled  the  two  last  pages  with  an 
essay  on  regimen.  I  don't  pretend  to  direct  the  learned  ; 
the  rich  and  voluptuous  will  scorn  my  direction,  and  sneer 
or  rail  at  any  that  would  reclaim  them  ;  but  since  this 
sheet  enters  the  solitary  dwellings  of  the  poor  and  illiter- 
ate, where  the  studied  ingenuity  of  the  learned  writer 
never  comes,  if  these  brief  hints  do  good,  it  will  rejoice 
the  heart  of  your  humble  servant,  Nathaniel  Ames." 

February  24-27.  "  If  you  fall  into  misfortunes,  creep  through  those 
bushes  which  have  the  least  briers." 

March  21-23.  "Expectation  waits  to  know  whether  the  mountain 
bears  a  mouse  or  no." 

October  25-28.  "  There  are  three  faithful  friends — an  old  wife,  an 
old  dog,  and  ready  cash." 

November  6-8.     "Were  things  done  twice,  many  would  be  wise."1 

July  16-27.  "  Every  man  carries  a  fool  in  his  sleeve  ;  with  some  he  ap- 
pears bold,  with  some  h«  only  pops  out  now  and  then,  but  the 
wise  keep  him  hid." 

September  12-16.  "  To  some  men  their  country  is  their  shame;  and 
some  are  the  shame  of  their  country."* 

He  sprinkles  his  pages  with  wholesome  suggestions 
about  health-getting  and  health-keeping.  For  September, 
1762,  he  says:  "This  month  is  a  proper  season  to  recruit 
the  unhealthy,  by  taking  Dr.  Horse  and  riding  long  jour- 
neys— though  moderately."  The  gospel  that  he  preaches 
is  the  gospel  of  health,  virtue,  economy,  industry,  content ; 
he  shows  that  always  grumbling  is  either  a  vice  or  a  dis- 
ease, and  that  whichever  it  be,  the  first  duty  of  every  man 
is  to  rid  himself  of  it : 

1  Almanac  for  1758.  *  Almanac  for  1763. 


126  HISTOR  V  OF  AMERICAN  LI 7 ERA  TURE. 

"  As  for  myself,  whom  poverty  prevents 
From  being  angry  at  so  great  expense, 

I  choose  to  labor,  rather  than  to  fret ; 
What's  rage  in  some,  in  me  goes  off  in  sweat. 
If  times  are  ill,  and  things  seem  never  worse, 
Men,  manners,  to  reclaim, — I,  take  my  horse: 
One  mile  reforms  'em  ;  or,  if  aught  remain 
Unpurged — 'tis  but  to  ride  as  far  again. 
Thus  on  myself  in  toils  I  spend  my  rage  : 
I  pay  the  fine,  and  that  absolves  the  age. 
Sometimes,  still  more  to  interrupt  my  ease, 
I  take  my  pen,  and  write  such  things  as  these; 
Which,  though  all  other  merit  be  denied, 
Show  my  devotion  still  to  be  employed. 

And  since  midst  indolence,  spleen  will  prevail, 
Since  who  do  nothing  else,  are  sure  to  rail, 
Men  should  be  suffered  thus  to  play  the  fool 
To  keep  from  hurt,  as  children  go  to  school." ' 

The  almanac  for  1736  ends  with  a  brief  prose  essay, 
which  is  an  amusing  miscellany  of  physical  learning  and 
humor,  all  intended  to  interest  the  reader  and  to  ad- 
vertise the  merits  of  a  certain  invaluable  medicine — worm- 
seed  for  children  ;  concluding  with  this  paragraph  wor- 
thy of  the  shrewdness  of  Poor  Richard  himself :  "  Some 
nurses  are  so  superstitious  that  they  dare  not  give  their 
children  worm-seed  without  pounding  and  sifting  it,  af- 
firming that  every  seed  that  escapes  being  bruised  in  the 
mortar  will  become  a  live  worm  in  the  bowels  of  the 
child.  But,  by  the  by,  it  is  an  excellent  medicine  for  the 
purpose,  and  they  need  not  be  afraid  to  use  it ;  for,  if  they 
will  prove  that  it  can  breed  worms  in  children,  I  can  as 
easily  prove  that  it  can  breed  children  in  women  ;  and  so 
those  unhappy  persons  who  have  had  the  ill-luck  to  have 
children  without  fathers,  need  not  lie  under  the  imputa- 
tion of  scandal,  if  they  can  produce  sufficient  evidence 
that  they  have  taken  worm-seed." 

1  Almanac  for  1757 


NATHANIEL  AMES.  I2/ 

His  pages  are  sprinkled  with  verses  from  the  English 
poets  and  from  his  own  pen, — the  latter  often  of  great 
vigor  and  sprightliness.  For  1736,  he  spreads  over  the 
almanac  a  poem  of  twelve  stanzas,  one  stanza  being  pre- 
fixed to  each  month.  The  subject  of  the  poem  is  the  Day 
of  Judgment,  and  is  so  vivid  and  powerful  in  its  descrip- 
tions, and  is  so  blended  with  ominous  references  to  the 
stars  and  to  the  warring  elements,  that  it  must  have  car- 
ried awe  into  many  impressible  minds,  as  if  the  omniscient 
almanac-maker  intended  actually  to  announce  the  coming 
of  the  awful  day  that  very  year.  This  is  the  stanza  for 
January: 

"  The  muses  tremble  with  a  faltering  wing, 
While  nature's  great  catastrophe  they  sing; 
For  Helicon  itself,  their  sacred  throne, 
Must  to  the  womb  of  chaos  back  return. 
The  cheerful  region  of  the  earth  and  air 
Is  filled  with  horror,  darkness,  and  despair." 

So,  with  fascinating  gloom  opens  the  year;  and  thus 
it  proceeds,  with  variations  of  poetic  horror,  month  by 
month.  In  March,  we  have  this  mystic  and  dreadful  de- 
scription of  the  moon  and  stars : 

"  No  more  she  rules  as  regent  of  the  night, 
But  fills  her  orb  with  blood  instead  of  light; 
And  dissolution  reigns  both  near  and  far, 
Through  heaven's  wide  circuit  round.     Each  shining  star 
His  intricate  nocturnal  mazes  stops, 
And  from  his  place  assigned  in  heaven  down  drops." 

In  the  following  month  things  grow  rapidly  worse.  The 
stars,  it  will  be  remembered,  have  fallen : 

"  Their  light  extinct,  nature  in  darkness  ends, 
Except  what  light  hell's  horrid  bosom  sends 
Around  the  sky ;  her  baneful  torches  come 
To  light  dissolving  nature  to  her  tomb. 
The  earth  with  trembling  agonies  doth  roll, 
As  though  she  mixed  her  centre  with  the  pole." 


128  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITER  A  TURE. 

In  May, 

"  The  seas  do  roar  ;  and  every  peaceful  lake 
And  wandering  rivers  horrid  murmurings  make  ; 
The  rocks  explode,  and  trembling  mountains  nod, 
And  valleys  rise  at  the  approaching  God  ; 
From  heaven's  high  court  angelic  throngs  descend; 
Myriads  this  great  solemnity  attend." 

It  must  have  given  some  relief  to  sensitive  readers  to 
cast  the  eye  further  down  the  page,  and  to  read  in  the 
author's  prose  his  cheerful  prophecies  concerning  the 
course  of  the  weather  for  that  very  month ;  for  he  assures 
them  of  "  a  fine  pleasant  air,  with  gentle  gales,"  and  of 
"  fair,  pleasant,  growing  weather."  And  although  there  is 
an  ominous  threat  of  combustibility  during  the  last  week — 
"  This  week  will  afford  heat  and  thunder  " — yet  the  pros- 
pect is  redeemed  by  the  subsequent  promise  of  "  now  and 
then  a  sprinkling  of  rain," — which,  of  course,  must  defer 
the  general  conflagration.  The  stanza  for  July  concludes 
with  this  couplet : 

"  A  rending  sound  from  the  expanded  skies 
Commands  the  dead,  the  sleepy  dead,  to  rise  ;  " 

which  harmonizes  admirably  with  the  weather  probabili- 
ties for  the  same  time ;  "  The  month  ends  with  thunder 
and  hot  weather." 

The  almanac  for  1749,  the  year  succeeding  the  close  of 
King  George's  War,  has  a  fine  literary  tone,  and  its  poetic 
motto,  on  the  title-page,  is  a  noble  prophecy  of  peace 
in  the  world : 

"  No  heroes'  ghosts,  with  garments  rolled  in  blood, 
Majestic  stalk  ;  the  golden  age  renewed, 
No  hollow  drums  in  Flanders  beat ;  the  breath 
Of  brazen  trumpets  rings  no  peals  of  death. 
The  milder  stars  their  peaceful  beams  afford, 
And  sounding  hammer  beats  the  wounding  sword 
To  ploughshares  now  ;  Mars  must  to  Ceres  yield, 
And  exiled  Peace  returns  and  takes  the  field." 


NATHANIEL  AMES. 


I29 


The  essay  at  the  end  of  the  almanac  for  1758,  is  of  un- 
usual merit  for  thought  and  vivacity  of  expression.  It 
is  a  fine  specimen  of  what  we  now  call  a  leading  edi- 
torial article — terse,  epigrammatic,  vigorous,  formed  to 
catch  and  to  hold  the  attention  ;  and  it  is  a  very  credit- 
able example  of  literary  style.  It  was  written  in  the  midst 
of  the  struggle  between  France  and  England  for  the  em- 
pire of  America.  It  is  upon  "  America — its  Past,  Present, 
and  Future  State."  With  reference  to  the  Past,  he  says : 
"Time  has  cast  a  shade  upon  this  scene.  Since  the  crea- 
tion, innumerable  accidents  have  happened  here,  the  bare 
mention  of  which  would  create  wonder  and  surprise ;  but 
they  are  all  lost  in  oblivion.  The  ignorant  natives,  for 
want  of  letters,  have  forgot  their  stock,  and  know  not  from 
whence  they  came,  or  how,  or  when  they  arrived  here,  or 
what  has  happened  since."  Then  glancing  at  the  events 
that  have  happened  in  America  since  the  arrival  of  the 
Europeans,  he  describes  the  magnificent  territory  of  the 
North-West  then  in  dispute:  "Time  was  when  we  might 
have  been  possessed  of  it ;  at  this  time  two  mighty  kings 
contend  for  this  inestimable  prize.  Their  respective  claims 
are  to  be  measured  by  the  length  of  their  swords.  The 
poet  says,  '  the  Gods  and  Opportunity  ride  post ; '  that  you 
must  take  her  by  the  forelock,  being  bald  behind.  Have 
we  not  too  fondly  depended  upon  our  numbers?  Sir  Fran- 
cis Bacon  says,  '  The  wolf  careth  not  how  many  the  sheep 
be.'  But  numbers,  well  -  spirited,  with  the  blessing  oi 
heaven,  will  do  wonders  when  by  military  skill  and  disci- 
pline the  commanders  can  actuate,  as  by  one  soul,  the  most 
numerous  bodies  of  armed  people.  Our  numbers  will  not 
avail  till  the  colonies  are  united.  ...  If  we  do  not  join 
heart  and  hand  in  the  common  cause  against  our  exulting 
foes,  but  fall  to  disputing  amongst  ourselves,  it  may  really 
happen  as  the  governor  of  Pennsylvania  told  his  assembly, 
4  We  shall  have  no  privilege  to  dispute  about,  nor  country 
to  dispute  in.' " 

His  treatment  of  the  Future  State  of  America  shows  a        ^^^ 
VOL.  ii.— g  \ 


130 


HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITER  A  TURE. 


remarkable  grasp  of  facts  relating  to  the  physical  resources 
of  the  continent,  and  an  unusual  power  of  reason  in  con- 
structing the  possibilities  of  civil  and  material  devel- 
opment, especially  in  the  West :  "  Here  we  find  a  vast 
stock  of  proper  materials  for  the  art  and  ingenuity  of  man 
to  work  on, — treasures  of  immense  worth,  concealed  from 
the  poor,  ignorant,  aboriginal  natives.  .  .  .  As  the  celestial 
light  of  the  gospel  was  directed  here  by  the  finger  of  God, 
it  will  doubtless  finally  drive  the  long,  long  night  of  hea- 
thenish darkness  from  America.  ...  So  arts  and  sciences 
will  change  the  face  of  nature  in  their  tour  from  hence  over 
the  Appalachian  Mountains  to  the  Western  Ocean  ;  and  as 
they  march  through  the  vast  desert,  the  residence  of  wild 
beasts  will  be  broken  up,  and  their  obscene  howl  cease  for- 
ever. Instead  of  which,  the  stones  and  trees  will  dance 
together  at  the  music  of  Orpheus,  the  rocks  will  disclose 
their  hidden  gems,  and  the  inestimable  treasures  of  gold 
and  silver  be  broken  up.  Huge  mountains  of  iron  ore  are 
already  discovered  ;  and  vast  stores  are  reserved  for  future 
generations.  This  metal,  more  useful  than  gold  and  silver, 
will  employ  millions  of  hands,  not  only  to  form  the  mar- 
tial sword  and  peaceful  share  alternately,  but  an  infinity  of 
utensils  improved  in  the  exercise  of  art  and  handicraft 
amongst  men.  .  .  .  Shall  not  then  these  vast  quarries 
that  teem  with  mechanic  stone, — those  for  structure  be 
piled  into  great  cities,  and  those  for  sculpture  into  statues, 
to  perpetuate  the  honor  of  renowned  heroes — even  those 
who  shall  now  save  their  country?"  He  then  closes  with 
this  appeal  to  posterity:  "O  ye  unborn  inhabitants  of 
America !  should  this  page  escape  its  destined  conflagra- 
tion at  the  year's  end,  and  these  alphabetical  letters  re- 
main legible  when  your  eyes  behold  the  sun  after  he  has 
rolled  the  seasons  round  for  two  or  three  centuries  more, 
you  will  know  that  in  Anno  Domini,  1/58,  we  dreamed 
of  your  times." 


CHAPTER  XIV. 

NEW  ENGLAND:    HISTORY  AND   BIOGRAPHY. 

I. — Further  development  of  the  historic  spirit  in  New  England— Biography 
and  biographers— Ebenezer  Turell — His  biographies  of  Jane  Turell  and 
of  Benjamin  Colman. 

II. — William  Hubbard — Picture  of  him  by  John  Dunton — His  literary  cul- 
ture and  aptitude — Qualities  of  his  style — His  "  General  History  of  New 
England"— His  "  Indian  Wars  "—Celebrity  of  the  latter— Its  faults  and 
merits— Represents  the  wrath  of  the  people  against  the  Indians — Portrait 
of  a  noble  savage. 

III. — Other  literary  memorials  of  the  long  conflict  with  the  Indians — Mary 
Rowlandson  and  her  thrilling  "Narrative"  of  Indian  captivity — "The 
Redeemed  Captive,"  by  John  Williams  of  Deerfield — Benjamin  Church — 
His  history  of  King  Philip's  War  and  of  other  struggles  with  the  Indians — 
Interest  of  his  narratives — Samuel  Penhallow — His  history  of  Indian  wars 
— Pictures  of  heroism  and  cruelty — His  reminiscences  of  classical  study — 
Samuel  Niles — His  "  History  of  the  Indian  and  French  Wars." 

IV. — Thomas  Prince — His  eminent  career — His  special  taste  and  training  for 
history — Has  the  cardinal  virtues  of  an  historian — His  "  Chronological 
History  of  New  England  " — Thoroughness  of  his  methods — Salient  fea- 
tures of  the  book — Its  worthiness. 

V.— John  Callender— His  careful  sketch  of  the  first  century  of  Rhode  Island's 
history. 

VI.— William  Douglass — The  life  and  the  singularities  of  the  man— A  literary 
Ishmaelite — His  ability  and  self-confidence — His  sarcastic  account  of  the 
medical  profession  in  America — His  "Summary" — A  passionate,  hetero- 
geneous, able  book — Its  style  and  scope — Its  drolleries — His  dislike  of  the 
Indians,  of  the  French,  of  Whitefield,  of  Bishop  Berkeley,  and  of  paper- 
money — General  estimate  of  his  book. 


THE  one  form  of  secular  literature  for  which,  during  the 
entire  colonial  age,  the  writers  of  New  England  had  the 
most  authentic  vocation,  is  history. 

All  persons  of  devout,  brooding,  and  introverted  natures 


!  3  2  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITER  A  TURE. 

are  apt  to  keep  records  of  themselves, — to  have  the  his* 
toric  feeling;  for  to  such  persons  life  seems  so  costly  and 
venerable  a  thing,  that  they  would  hold  the  memory  of  it 
from  lapsing  into  that  grave  of  the  past,  whither  life  itself 
every  moment  is  hurrying.  The  men  and  women  who 
founded  the  sturdy  little  commonwealths  of  New  England, 
had  such  natures;  they  reverenced  themselves,  they  rever- 
enced their  lives,  they  reverenced  the  stupendous  task  to 
which  they  were  giving  their  lives.  By  a  law  as  deep  as 
their  own  souls,  they  were,  inevitably,  from  the  first,  a  race 
of  diarists,  chroniclers,  biographers,  autobiographers,  his- 
torians.  And  their  children  and  their  children's  children 
were  like  unto  them.  The  historic  feeling  did  not  perish, 
nr  even  abate,  with  the  passing  of  the  generations.  It 
throve  rather,  and  grew  lustier,  nourishing  itself  on  a  finer 
and  broader  acceptance  of  life,  and  on  the  sweet  memory 
of  its  own  heroic  age. 

Our  second  literary  period  produced  four  considerable 
historians,— William  Hubbard,  Cotton  Mather,  Thomas 
Prince,  Thomas  Hutchinson :  the  first  two  excelling,  in 
popularity,  all  other  historians  of  the  colonial  time  ;  the 
last  two  excelling  all  others  in  specific  training  for  the 
profession  of  history,  and  in  the  conscious  accumulation 
af  materials  for  historic  work.1 

Of  that  species  of  history  that  is  devoted  to  the  lives  of 
individuals  rather  than  of  communities,  there  were  many 
specimens  produced  in  the  colonial  epoch  ;  such,  for  ex- 
ample, as  biographies  of  John  Cotton,  Richard  Mather, 
Increase  Mather,  Cotton  Mather,  and  of  the  great  army 
of  divines,  heroes,  and  sages  that  abide  eternally  in  the 
"  Magnalia."  But  it  is  a  singular  fact  that,  in  literary 
quality,  the  biographies  written  in  colonial  New  England 
are  far  inferior  to  its  histories. 


1  Of  these  four  historians,  it  will  be  most  convenient  to  deal  with  the  last, 
Thomas  Hutchinson,  in  another  volume,  to  be  devoted  to  the  literature  of 
the  American  Revolution. 


WILLIAM  HUBBARD. 


'33 


The  best  example  of  its  biographical  work  is  "  The  Life 
and  Character  of  the  Reverend  Benjamin  Colman,"  by  his 
son-in-law,  Ebenezer  Turell,  published  in  Boston,  in  1749. 
Even  this  distinction,  however,  does  not  imply  exalted 
merit.  In  its  construction,  the  book  imitates  a  bad  model, 
— Samuel  Mather's  "  Life  of  Cotton  Mather," — wherein  the 
narrative  is  arranged,  not  in  the  natural  order  of  time,  but 
in  the  artificial  one  of  topics.  The  style  of  Turell's  book 
is  superior  to  Samuel  Mather's,  being  pure  and  pleasant ; 
and  his  admiration  for  his  subject,  while  it  is  hearty  and 
reverent,  never  betrays  him  into  hyperboles  of  laudation.1 


II. 

William  Hubbard  was  born  in  England  in  1621 ;  came 
to  New  England  in  his  childhood ;  and  was  one  of  that  re- 
markable group  of  nine  young  men  whom  Harvard  College 
sent  forth,  in  1642,  as  the  first  specimens  of  high  culture 
achieved  in  the  woods  of  America.  By  training,  by  strong 
aptitude,  and  by  prevailing  engagements,  he  was  almost  a 
professional  man  of  letters.  The  most  of  his  life  he  passed 
as  minister  of  the  First  Church  at  Ipswich,  Massachusetts, 
where  his  learning  and  eloquence  won  for  him  a  command- 
ing reputation.  But  his  distinction  points  to  the  literary 
rather  than  to  the  theological  side  of  personal  greatness. 
Indeed,  the  breadth  of  his  thought,  his  geniality,  and 
his  tolerance  seems  well-nigh  to  have  cracked  the  shell 
of  clerical  propriety  in  which  he  was  encased.  Thomas 
Hutchinson2  speaks  of  him  as  having  "a  good  degree  of 


1  Turell  also  published,  in  1735,  "  Memoirs  of  the  Life  and  Death  of  the 
Pious  and  Ingenious  Mrs.  Jane  Turell."  The  book  is  largely  made  up  of 
her  writings,  especially  her  poetry.  She  was  the  literary  phenomenon  of  an 
admiring  circle  of  friends  ;  but  she  died  before  she  had  outgrown  the  feeble- 
ness of  poetic  imitation.  Indeed,  she  left  no  proofs  of  poetic  genius,  more 
notable  than  are  to  be  found  in  the  desk  of  almost  any  spirited  school-girl 
with  a  tendency  toward  emotional  effervescence  in  verse. 

*  "  Hist.  Mass.  Bay,"  II.  136,  note. 


134 


HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 


Catholicism,"  which,  as  that  historian  suggests,  "  was  not 
accounted  the  most  valuable  part  of  his  character  in  the 
age  in  which  he  lived."  He  resided  in  his  parish  of  Ipswich 
to  the  great  age  of  eighty-three ;  and  from  contemporary 
allusions  we  may  picture  him  to  ourselves  as  a  stately, 
affable,  and  accomplished  gentleman,  the  ideal  country- 
pastor  in  a  highly  intellectual  community,— passing  the 
most  of  his  time  in  his  library,  and  filling  the  long  quiet 
spaces  of  his  life  with  various  culture.  The  eccentric 
London  bookseller,  John  Dunton,  who  made  a  voyage  of 
business  to  New  England  in  1686,  has  left  a  lively  pic- 
ture of  Hubbard,  by  whom  the  bookseller  was  hospitably 
received  on  his  visit  to  Ipswich :  "  The  benefit  of  nature 
and  the  fatigue  of  study  have  equally  contributed  to  his 
eminence ;  neither  are  we  less  obliged  to  both  than  him- 
self, for  he  fully  communicates  of  his  learning  to  all  who 
have  the  happiness  to  share  in  his  converse.  In  a  word, 
he  is  learned  without  ostentation  and  vanity,  and  gives  all 
his  productions  ...  a  delicate  turn  and  grace."1  Like 
nearly  all  his  clerical  associates  in  those  days,  he  pub- 
lished occasional  sermons ;  and  these,  having  the  unusual 
quality  of  verbal  elegance,  did  much  to  form  his  reputa- 
tion as  a  writer  of  genuine  literary  skill. 2  But  his  most 
important  work  was  done  as  an  historian  ;  and  as  such 
he  represents  a  clear  advance,  at  least  in  the  literary 
quality  of  his  labor.  He  had  an  ear  for  style,  something 
of  poetic  feeling,  a  conscious  purpose  of  art.  His  hand 

1  J.  Dunton,  "  Life  and  Errors,"  I.  134. 

2  I  think,  however,  that    the   praise  of   Hubbard   as    a    writer  has  been 
overdone.     Thus,   John    Eliot,    in    his    "  Biographical    Dictionary,"    speaks 
of  Hubbard    as    "superior  to  all  his  contemporaries  as  a  prose  writer;" 
and   James  Savage,   in    N.   A.   Review,  II.  221-230,   speaks   of  Hubbard's 
election-sermon  as  surpassed  in  style  by  "  no  work    of  the  two  next  gen- 
erations."    That  sermon  is  able  and  impressive;  its  diction  is  smooth  and 
dignified  ;  yet  it  is  far  inferior,  in    all    respects,   to  the   sermons  of  Urian 
Oakes,  John  Barnard,  Benjamin  Colman,  Jonathan  Mayhew,  or  Mather  Byles. 
His  own  fellow-townsman,  John  Wise,  was  vastly  his  superior  as  a  prose 
writer. 


WILLIAM  HUBBARD. 


135 


loved  to  form  sentences  that  had  precision  in  them,  a 
liquid  flow,  the  lingering  echo  of  pleasant  sounds,  imagi- 
native meanings. 

In  his  capacity  of  historian,  Hubbard  wrote  two  works, 
considerable  in  size,  very  unequal  in  merit.  The  less 
valuable  one  is  "A  General  History  of  New  England  from 
the  Discovery  to  1680,"  left  by  him  in  manuscript,  and 
not  put  into  print  until  the  present  century.1  Of  this 
work,  many  pages  are  transferred  solidly  from  Morton's 
"  New  England's  Memorial ;  "  and  for  the  period  between 
1630  and  1650,  the  larger  part  of  Hubbard  is  but  a  literal 
repetition  of  Winthrop.  The  book  seems  to  have  been 
done  as  a  mere  literary  job. 

A  more  agreeable  task  awaits  us  when  we  come  to  the 
study  of  Hubbard's  "  Narrative  of  the  Troubles  with  the 
Indians  in  New  England," a  from  the  earliest  white  settle- 
ment to  the  year  1677.  If,  in  the  seventeenth  century,  was 
produced  in  America  any  prose  work  which,  for  its  almost 
universal  diffusion  among  the  people,  deserves  the  name 
of  an  American  classic,  it  is  this  work.  The  author  evi- 
dently wrought  upon  it  with  genuine  zest.  It  is  not  with- 
out serious  faults.  As  a  whole  the  narrative  would  now 
seem  tedious,  being  clogged  by  petty  items,  often  wander- 
ing into  digressions,  lacking  a  continuous  and  culminating 
power.  Moreover,  the  work  has  a  still  greater  blemish ; 
it  is  inaccurate.  An  antiquarian  of  our  time  calls  the 
author  "  the  careless  Hubbard  ;  "  *  and  one  of  his  own  con- 
temporaries says,  with  some  exaggeration,  of  the  work 

'First  published  by  Mass.  Hist.  Soc.  1815  ;  reprinted  by  the  same  Society 
in  1848,  under  the  editorial  care  of  Thaddeus  Mason  Harris. 

*  First  published,  both  in  Boston  and  in  London,  in  1677.     The  London 
edition  is  the  more  accurate,  and  probably  had  the  personal  supervision  of 
the  author,  who,  there  is  reason  to  think,  went  to  London  with  a  copy  of  his 
work.     The  best  reprint  of  the  work  is  one  edited  by  S.  G.  Drake,  2  vols. 
Roxbury,   1865.     My  quotations,  however,   are    from    the   Stockbridge  re- 
print, 1803  ;  but  I  have  collated  them  with  the  corresponding  passages  in 
Drake's  ed. 

*  Alexander  Young,  "Chron.  Pilg."  334.  note. 


136 


HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITER  A  TURE. 


now  before  us,  "  the  mistakes  are  judged  to  be  many  more 
than  the  truths  in  it."  l  In  spite  of  all  this,  however,  as 
a  narrative  embodying  the  spirit  of  early  New  England 
heroism,  it  has  qualities  that  still  give  to  it  something  of 
the  interest  which  it  had  for  its  original  readers.  In  many 
passages  the  style  is  strong,  picturesque,  dramatic,  enli- 
vened by  an  occasional  touch  of  sarcasm  or  humor ;  de- 
tached incidents  are  often  told  with  thrilling  effect.  It  is 
not  impossible  for  us  even  now  to  understand  why,  during 
several  generations,  the  book  had  an  absorbing  fascination 
for  its  readers  in  New  England,  to  whom  these  Indian 
stories  brought  home  again  the  traditions  of  dreadful  ex- 
perience and  daring  achievement  on  the  part  of  their  own 
kindred. 

In  one  thing,  certainly,  the  book  is  authentic  ;  it  repre- 
sents the  immeasurable  rage  against  the  Indians,  that 
had  at  last  taken  possession  of  the  white  inhabitants  of 
New  England, — their  final  purpose  to  count  out  those 
bipeds  from  the  list  of  human  beings,  and  to  wipe  them 
out  from  the  face  of  the  earth.  Here  Hubbard  is  the 
frank  voice  of  his  contemporaries.  He  utters  words  about 
the  red  men,  that  are  rasping  and  fell ;  such  as  one  hears 
still,  upon  the  same  topic,  on  the  American  frontiers.  In 
his  pages,  the  Indians  are  "treacherous  villains,"2  "the 
dross  of  mankind,"3  "  the  dregs  and  lees  of  the  earth,"4 
"  faithless  and  ungrateful  monsters," 5  "  children  of  the 
Devil,  full  of  all  subtlety  and  malice,"6  and  Philip  himself 
is  "  this  treacherous  and  perfidious  caitiff."  7  "  Subtlety, 
malice,  and  revenge  seem  to  be  as  inseparable  from  them 
as  if  it  were  a  part  of  their  essence.  Whatever  hopes 
may  be  of  their  conversion  to  Christianity  in  after  time, 
there  is  but  little  appearance  of  any  truth  in  their  hearts 
at  present,  where  so  much  of  the  contrary  is  ordinarily 

1  John  Cotton  of  Plymouth,  in  letter  to  Increase  Mather,  4  Mass.  Hist. 
Soc.  Coll.  VIII.  232. 

8  "  Indian  Wars,"  18.  8  Ibid.  18.  4  Ibid.  18. 

»  Ibid.  1 18.  •  Ibid.  120.  T  Ibid.  69. 


WILLIAM  HUBBARD.  137 

breathed  out  of  their  mouths." f  Of  the  fate  of  cer- 
tain Indians  taken  in  battle,  he  has  this  quiet  and  classic 
description:  "The  men  .  .  .  were  turned  presently  into 
Charon's  ferry-boat,  under  the  command  of  skipper  Gallop, 
who  dispatched  them,  a  little  without  the  harbor." 2 

Along  these  old  pages,  which  almost  quiver  with  fury 
against  the  Indians,  and  are  strewn  with  words  that  seem 
to  weary  the  vocabulary  of  execration  and  contempt,  we 
now  and  then  come  to  a  portrait  of  some  Indian  who  is 
neither  brute  nor  caitiff,  but  for  pride  and  fortitude  towers 
into  a  hero,  and  renders  credible  Dryden's  conception 
of  "  the  noble  savage."  One  day,  during  King  Philip's 
War,  some  white  men  and  a  few  Indian  allies,  resting  in 
front  of  their  camp  in  the  woods,  caught  sight,  at  a  dis- 
tance, of  a  stalwart  Indian,  of  princely  air,  running  swiftly 
as  if  from  pursuit.  They  "  guessed  by  the  swiftness  of 
his  motion,  that  he  fled  as  if  an  enemy."  They  instantly 
joined  in  the  chase  ;  and  one  of  them,  an  Indian  named 
Catapazet,  "  put  him  so  hard  to  it,  that  he  cast  off,  first  his 
blanket,  then  his  silver-laced  coat  and  belt  of  peag,  which 
made  Catapazet  conclude  it  was  the  right  bird.  ...  So  as 
they  forced  him  to  take  the  water,  through  which  as  he 
overhastingly  plunged,  his  foot  slipping  upon  a  stone,  it 
made  him  fall  into  the  water  so  deep  as  it  wetted  his 
gun ;  upon  which  accident,  he  confessed  soon  after,  that 
his  heart  and  his  bowels  turned  within  him,  so  as  he  be- 
came like  a  rotten  stick,  void  of  strength  ;  insomuch  as 
one  Monopoide,  a  Pequod,  swiftest  of  foot,  laid  hold 
of  him  within  thirty  rod  of  the  riverside,  without  his 
making  any  resistance  ;  though  he  was  a  very  proper  man, 
of  goodly  stature  and  great  courage  of  mind,  as  well  as 
strength  of  body.  One  of  the  first  English  that  came  up 
with  him  was  Robert  Stanton,  a  young  man  that  scarce 
had  reached  the  twenty-second  year  of  his  age ;  yet  adven- 
turing to  ask  him  a  question  or  two,  to  whom  this  manly 

1  "  Indian  Wars,"  359-360.  *  Ibid.  41. 


1 38  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

sachem,  looking  with  a  little  neglect  upon  his  youthful 
face,  replied  in  broken  English,  'You  much  child,  no 
understand  matters  of  war ;  let  your  brother  or  your  chief 
come,  him  I  will  answer;'  and  was  as  good  as  his  word, 
acting  herein  as  if,  by  a  Pythagorean  metempsychosis, 
some  old  Roman  ghost  had  possessed  the  body  of  this 
western  pagan.  .  .  .  He  continuing  in  the  same  his  ob- 
stinate resolution,  was  carried  soon  after  to  Stonington, 
where  he  was  shot  to  death  by  some  of  his  own  quality. 
.  .  .  This  was  the  confusion  of  a  damned  wretch,  that  had 
often  opened  his  mouth  to  blaspheme  the  name  of  the 
living  God,  and  those  that  made  profession  thereof.  .  .  . 
And  when  he  was  told  his  sentence  was  to  die,  he  said  he 
liked  it  well ;  that  he  should  die  before  his  heart  was  soft, 
or  had  spoken  anything  unworthy  of  himself."  1 

III. 

Of  the  sorrowful  conflict  in  New  England  between  Eng- 
lishmen and  Indians,  reaching  its  reddest  crisis  in  1676, 
there  is  no  more  graphic  or  more  exquisite  literary  memo- 
rial than  a  little  book  written  by  a  woman — who  had  in 
her  own  person  a  frightful  experience  of  it — Mary  Row- 
landson,  wife  of  the  pastor  of  the  church  at  Lancaster,  then 
an  outpost  of  civilization.  In  the  bitterness  of  winter, 
February  the  tenth,  1676,  while  her  husband  was  absent 
in  Boston,  the  town  in  which  she  lived  was  suddenly  as- 
saulted and  destroyed  by  Indians ;  and  she,  with  her  chil- 
dren, was  carried  away  into  captivity,  experiencing  horrible 
treatment.  After  eleven  weeks  and  five  days,  with  money 
raised  for  the  purpose  by  the  women  of  Boston,  she  was 
ransomed ;  and  while  all  the  anguish  of  her  fright  and  suf- 
fering was  still  fresh  in  her  memory,  she  wrote  a  narrative 
of  her  captivity,  which  was  first  printed  in  New  England 
in  1682,  was  reissued  in  London  the  same  year,  and  hai 

1  "  Indian  Wars,"  167-169. 


JOHN  WILLIAMS.  !39 

been  repeatedly  published  since  then.1  It  is  a  series  of 
life-like  pictures  of  the  wild  and  sorrowful  scenes  that  she 
had  encountered  ;  is  most  effective  in  its  artless  touches 
of  pathos ;  and  is  such  an  exhibition  of  Indian  barbarity 
as  must  have  driven  still  deeper  into  the  minds  of  the 
New-Englanders  their  hate  of  the  red  men,  and  their  quiet 
purpose  of  giving  them  over  to  doom.  The  diction  of 
this  little  book  is  admirable, — the  pure,  idiomatic,  and 
sinewy  English  of  a  cultivated  American  matron. 

Another  powerful  picture  of  Indian  cruelty,  but  refer- 
ring to  a  time  nearly  thirty  years  later,  is  "  The  Redeemed 
Captive,"  by  John  Williams,2  who,  in  1686,  at  the  age  of 
twenty-two,  had  entered  upon  his  life-long  pastorate  at 
Deerfield,  Massachusetts.  This  village  was  then  on  the 
furthest  edge  of  the  white  settlements,  and  was  protected 
from  Indian  assaults  only  by  a  rude  picketed  fort.  Sen- 
tinels kept  guard  every  night ;  even  in  the  daytime,  no 
one  left  his  door-steps  without  a  musket ;  and  neighborly 
communication  between  the  houses  was  kept  up  principally 
by  underground  passages  from  cellar  to  cellar.  In  the 
winter  of  1704,  the  inhabitants  had  received  warning  of 
unusual  danger  approaching  them;  and  at  their  request 
twenty  soldiers  had  been  sent  to  them  as  a  special  guard. 
On  the  night  of  February  twenty-eighth,  the  watch  pa- 
trolled the  streets  until  just  before  dawn,  when,  unfor- 
tunately, they  yielded  to  the  desire  for  sleep ;  upon  which, 
three  hundred  Frenchmen  and  Indians  from  Canada,  who 
had  been  skulking  in  the  neighborhood,  waiting  for  such 
an  opportunity,  got  into  the  hapless  town.  What  followed, 
in  that  hideous  winter-darkness,  when  savage  and  fiendish 
lusts  were  at  once  let  loose  upon  victims  who  were  abso- 
lutely powerless,  is  told,  with  genuine  pathos,  by  the  pas- 


1  The  first  ed.  is  entitled  "  The  Sovereignty  and  Goodness  of  God  :  A  Nar- 
rative of  the  Captivity  and  Restoration  of  Mrs.  Mary  Rowlandson."  The 
6th  ed.  appeared  in  1828. 

*  Born  at  Roxbury,  1664 ;  graduated  at  Harvard,  1683. 


140 


HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITER  A  TURE. 


tor,  himself  and  family  being  among  the  chief  sufferers.1 
In  the  same  touching  manner,  he  narrates  the  whole  story 
of  his  captivity :  his  long,  faint  march  through  the  snows 
to  Canada ;  the  cruelties  and  the  courtesies  he  experienced 
there;  his  efforts  to  recover  his  children  from  the  Indians; 
the  adroit  and  persistent  attempts  of  the  Jesuits  to  induce 
him  to  apostatize  from  his  faith ;  and  finally,  after  a  bond- 
age of  more  than  two  years,  his  redemption  and  return 
home,  with  all  his  children,  excepting  one,  a  daughter,  who 
remained  the  rest  of  her  life  among  her  captors.2  In  the 
year  following  his  restoration,  he  published  his  famous 
narrative,  which  has  since  then  been  six  times  reprinted, 
and  has  contributed  its  tinge  of  horror  and  hate  to  the 
white  man's  memory  of  the  Indian. 

In  the  lineage  of  New  England  military  prowess,  a  true 
descendant  of  Miles  Standish  and  of  John  Mason  was 
Colonel  Benjamin  Church  ;  born  at  Plymouth,  Massachu- 
setts, in  1639;  founder  of  Little  Compton,  where  he  died 
in  1718;  a  matchless  guerilla-leader;  the  most  famous 
Indian-fighter  of  his  day ;  especially  renowned  as  the  con- 
queror of  King  Philip,  and  as  the  invincible  champion  of 
the  white  men  in  five  other  wars  against  the  Indians.  In 
his  old  age,  he  put  into  the  hands  of  his  son,  Thomas,  the 
memoranda  he  had  kept  of  his  campaigns,  and  he  caused 
to  be  written  and  published,  in  1716,  "  Entertaining  Pas- 
sages Relating  to  Philip's  War  ...  as  also  of  Expedi- 
tions more  lately  made  against  the  Common  Enemy  and 
Indian  Rebels  in  the  Eastern  Parts  of  New  England;"3  a 
book  that  stirred  the  very  heart  of  New  England,  holding 

1  "Redeemed  Captive,"  10-17. 

2  This  daughter  was  Eunice,  then  ten  years  old.     She  could  not  afterward 
be  induced  to  leave  the  Indians,  having  herself  become  an  Indian  in  habit 
and  language,  and  having  been  smitten  by  the  almost  incurable  fascination  of 
savage  life.     She  married  an  Indian  ;  and  their  supposed  grandson  or  great- 
grandson  was  Eleazer  Williams,  once  notorious  in  this  country  for  his  claim 
to  be  the  lost  Dauphin,  son  of  Louis  XVI.  and  Marie  Antoinette. 

3  Reprinted,  with  elaborate  and  careful  editing  by  Henry  Martyn  Dexter, 
Boston,  first  part,  1865  ;  second  part,  1867. 


SAMUEL  PENHALLOW.  141 

"  children  from  play  and  old  men  from  the  chimney-cor- 
ner," having  indeed  a  spell  almost  beyond  the  reach  of 
literary  art.  It  is  a  soldier's  bluff  narrative  of  his  own 
dangerous  and  enticing  adventures ;  it  is  full  of  individual 
incidents — risks,  grapplings,  bloodshed,  leaps  in  the  dark, 
all  manner  of  stern  things.  The  reader  seems  to  be  a 
listener,  and  to  be  sitting  by  the  side  of  this  scarred  and 
ancient  paladin  of  the  New  England  bush-whackers,  and 
to  hear  his  very  talk,  as  he  narrates,  frankly,  vividly,  and 
always  with  a  strong  man's  modesty,  the  deeds  that  once 
saved  every  New  England  man's  door-post  from  being 
bespattered  with  the  blood  of  his  own  wife  and  children. 
Another  fine  old  chronicler  of  the  Indian  troubles  was 
Samuel  Penhallow,  born  in  England  in  1665,  and  educated 
at  the  celebrated  dissenting  academy  of  Charles  Morton 
in  Newington  Green,  where  he  may  have  had  Daniel  De 
Foe  for  a  school-mate.  In  1686,  with  his  teacher,  he  came 
to  New  England,  intending  to  complete  his  studies  for 
the  Christian  ministry;  instead  of  which,  however,  he  mar- 
ried a  young  woman  of  great  wealth  at  Portsmouth,  New 
Hampshire;  and  thenceforward  resided  there,  devoting 
himself  to  the  care  of  his  property,  and  to  the  public  ser- 
vice. He  built  a  stately  mansion  ;  lived  in  the  grand  man- 
ner of  our  colonial  gentry ;  practised  a  boundless  hospi- 
tality ;  acquired  great  influence  in  the  province ;  was  for 
many  years  its  treasurer ;  and  died,  as  its  chief-justice,  in 
1726.  New  Hampshire,  being  then  a  frontier  colony,  had 
in  its  outlying  settlements  no  rest,  day  or  night,  from  the 
peril  of  an  Indian  massacre ;  and  in  the  very  year  in 
which  Penhallow  died,  he  published,  in  Boston,  "  The  His- 
tory of  the  Wars  of  New  England  with  the  Eastern  In- 
dians,"1 covering  the  period  from  1703  to  1726, — a  realistic 
and  vivid  story  of  all  that  time  of  anguish,  of  the  various 
assaults  of  the  Indians  upon  the  habitations  of  white  men, 


1  Reprinted  in  Boston,  1826 ;  also  in  N.  H.  Hist.  Soc.  Coll.  I.  ;  also  in 
Philadelphia,  1859.     My  references  are  to  the  reprint  last  named. 


I42  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

especially  of  several  stiff  and  dreadful  fights  in  which  the 
two  races  grappled  together  in  the  woods.  He  himself 
says  of  his  book  that  he  might  have  named  it,  after  Oro- 
sius,  "  De  Miseria  Hominum,"  since  it  is  "  no  other  than  a 
narrative  of  tragical  incursions  perpetrated  by  bloody  pa- 
gans, who  are  monsters  of  such  cruelty  that  the  words  of 
Virgil  may  not  unaptly  be  applied  to  them : 

Tristius  baud  illis  monstrum,  nee  saevior  ulla 
Pestis  et  ira  deum."1 

He  indicates  the  cruelty  of  the  savages  rather  by  har- 
rowing facts  than  by  epithets ;  yet  the  flow  of  the  history 
is  sometimes  broken  by  a  sentence  in  which  one  almost 
hears  a  sob  of  grief  and  rage.  No  veil  is  cast  by  him  over 
ghastly  and  blood-clotted  things ;  our  sensibilities  are  never 
spared ;  we  come  face  to  face,  constantly,  with  the  hard 
and  the  horrible.  In  one  place,  we  read  the  proclamation 
of  the  government  offering  from  ten  to  fifty  pounds  for 
every  Indian  scalp  that  shall  be  brought  in  ;  in  another,  we 
see  a  procession  of  white  captives  driven  onward  through 
the  woods,  fainting  by  the  way,  some  of  them  knocked  on 
the  head,  "  teeming  women  in  cold  blood  .  .  .  ript  open, 
others  fastened  to  stakes  and  burnt  alive."  *  We  have  a 
glimpse,  too,  of  a  scene  like  this :  A  group  of  Indians  one 
day  skulking  near  the  negligent  garrison  of  Haverhill, 
and  taking  it  by  surprise ;  the  sentinel  is  slain  ;  the  only 
white  person  at  all  adequate  being  a  brave  woman,  who 
"  perceiving  the  misery  that  was  attending  her,  and  hav- 
ing boiling  soap  on  the  fire,"  throws  it  over  the  assailants, 
scalding  one  of  them  to  death.  But  she  is  carried  off  by 
the  savages  ;  after  a  few  days  of  weariness  and  cruelty  she 
is  delivered  of  a  child ;  "  but  the  babe  soon  perished  .  .  . 
by  the  cruelty  of  the  Indians,  who,  as  it  cried,  threw  hot 
embers  in  its  mouth."8  On  another  page,  we  are  made 
acquainted  with  a  most  gritty  hero,  one  Lieutenant  Rob- 
bins,  who,  being  mortally  wounded  in  Lovewell's  famous 

1  "  The  History,"  etc.  73.  *  Ibid.  47.  *  Ibid.  33. 


SAMUEL  NILES.  143 

fight,  is  about  to  be  left  on  the  field  by  his  retreating  com- 
panions ;  but  "  being  sensible  of  his  dying  state,  desired 
one  of  the  company  to  charge  his  gun  and  leave  it  with 
him,  being  persuaded  that  the  Indians  by  the  morning 
would  come  and  scalp  him,  but  was  desirous  of  killing  one 
more  before  he  died."  l 

It  lends  a  sort  of  charm  to  this  unshrinking  narrative  of 
human  wretchedness,  that  the  author  often  dashes  his 
story  with  reminiscences  of  his  early  classical  studies,  giv- 
ing to  it  a  gentle  flavor  of  pedantry,  and  especially  sug- 
gesting a  piquant  contrast  between  lettered  and  elegant 
peace  and  the  savagery  of  the  facts  which  he  records.  He 
quotes  Virgil,  Horace,  Plutarch.  Now  and  then  he  finds 
a  parallelism  between  these  fatal  incidents  done  in  the 
American  wilderness,  and  others  done  to  immortal  remem- 
brance in  Greek  or  Roman  story :  as,  that  two  aged  men, 
"  Mr.  Phipenny  and  Mr.  Kent,"  were  attacked  by  Indians, 
"  and  soon  fell  by  their  fury ;  for,  being  advanced  in  years, 
they  were  so  infirm  that  I  might  say  of  them,  as  Juvenal 
did  of  Priam,  they  had  scarce  blood  enough  left  to  tinge 
the  knife  of  the  sacrifice."2  This  conjunction  of  Priam  and 
Mr.  Phipenny  is  unexpected,  at  the  least. 

We  must  make  room  for  one  more  of  these  historians 
of  New  England's  agony  of  effort  against  its  foes, — Samuel 
Niles,  who  was  a  Harvard  graduate,  an  eminent  min- 
ister, and  the  author  of  a  few  books  on  theology  and 
church-polity.  His  special  drift  was  toward  history.  In 
1747,  he  published  a  narrative,  in  crude  verse,  of  the  re- 
duction of  Louisburg ;  and  he  left  in  manuscript  a  volu- 
minous "  History  of  the  Indian  and  French  Wars."8  The 
life  of  the  author  stretched  from  before  the  time  of  King 
Philip's  War  until  after  the  time  of  the  conquest  of  Can- 
ada ;  and  from  his  own  memory  he  was  able  to  compose 

1  '*  The  History,"  etc.  113.  *  Ibid.  2O. 

*  Printed  in  3  Mass.  Hist  Soc.  ColL  VI.  154-279,  and  in  4  Mass.  Hist. 
Soc.  Coll.  V.  309-589. 


144 


HISTORY  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  JURE. 


large  portions  of  this  work.  He  used  freely,  besides,  the 
labors  of  others.  The  book  is  written  with  some  vigor 
and  verbal  skill ;  but  the  narrative  is  straggling  and  long- 
drawn,  and  the  interest  of  the  reader  soon  perishes  in  a 
wilderness  of  petty  details. 


IV. 

Thomas  Prince  was  born  at  Sandwich,  Massachusetts, 
in  1687;  was  graduated  at  Harvard  in  1707;  and  from 
1718  to  1758, — the  last  forty  years  of  his  life, — was  pastor 
of  the  South  Church,  Boston  ;  during  all  those  years  filling 
a  high  and  great  space  in  the  thoughts  of  his  contempora- 
ries. He  had  prepared  himself  for  the  public  service  by 
diligent  study  at  home,  and  by  eight  years  of  observation 
abroad ;  he  was  a  man  of  most  tolerant  and  brotherly 
spirit ;  his  days  were  filled  by  gentle  and  gracious  and  la- 
borious deeds ;  he  was  a  great  scholar ;  he  magnified  his 
office  and  edified  the  brethren  by  publishing  a  large  number 
of  judicious  and  nutritious  sermons ;  he  also  revised  and 
improved  the  New  England  Psalm  Book,  "by an  endeavor 
after  a  yet  nearer  approach  to  the  inspired  original,  as  well 
as  to  the  rules  of  poetry ;  " l  he  took  a  special  interest  in 
physical  science,  and  formed  quite  definite  opinions  about 
earthquakes,  comets,  "the  electrical  substance,"  and  so 
forth.  For  all  these  things,  he  was  deeply  honored  in  his 
own  time,  and  would  have  been  deeply  forgotten  in  ours, 
had  he  not  added  to  them  very  unique  performances  as 
an  historian.  No  American  writer  before  Thomas  Prince, 
qualified  himself  for  the  service  of  history  by  so  much 
conscious  and  specific  preparation  ;  and  though  others  did 
more  work  in  that  service,  none  did  better  work  than  he. 

The  foundation  of  his  character  as  an  historian  was  laid 
in  reverence,  not  only  for  truth,  but  for  precision,  and  in 
willingness  to  win  it  at  any  cost  of  labor  and  of  time.  He 

1  Part  of  title-page,  first  ed.  Boston,  1758. 


THOMAS  PRINCE. 


145 


likewise  felt  the  peculiar  authority  of  originals  in  historical 
testimony,  and  the  potential  value,  for  historical  illustra- 
tion, of  all  written  or  printed  materials  whatsoever ;  and 
while  he  was  yet  a  college-boy,  driven  by  the  sacred  ava- 
rice of  an  antiquarian  and  a  bibliographer,  he  began  to 
gather  that  great  library  of  early  American  documents, 
which  kept  growing  upon  his  hands  in  magnitude  and  in 
wealth  as  long  as  his  life  lasted,  and  which,  notwithstand- 
ing the  ravages  of  time,  of  British  troops,  of  book-borrow- 
ers, and  of  book-thieves,  still  remains  for  him  a  barrier 
against  oblivion,  and  for  every  student  of  early  American 
thought  and  action,  a  copious  treasure-house  of  help.1 

Even  in  childhood,  Thomas  Prince  had  felt  the  attrac- 
tions of  American  history ;  even  then  he  had  noted  some 
blemishes  in  the  attempts  thus  far  made  to  write  it;  and 
later,  during  his  residence  in  Europe,  he  had  become  con- 
scious of  the  ambition  to  give  his  life  to  its  pursuit :  "  In 
my  foreign  travels  I  found  the  want  of  a  regular  history 
of  this  country  everywhere  complained  of,  and  was  often 
moved  to  undertake  it ;  though  I  could  not  think  myself 
equal  to  a  work  so  noble  as  the  subject  merits.  .  .  .  And 
yet  I  had  a  secret  thought  that,  upon  returning  to  my 
native  country,  in  case  I  should  fall  into  a  state  of  leisure, 
...  I  would  attempt  a  brief  account  of  facts  at  least,  in 
the  form  of  annals."  -  But  the  pastorship  of  a  great  church 
in  Boston  was  not  a  state  of  leisure ;  and  it  was  not  until 
eighteen  years  had  passed,  after  his  return  to  New  Eng- 
land, that  he  was  able  in  any  measure  to  gratify  his  cher- 
ished passion.  In  1736,  he  gave  to  the  public  the  first 
volume  of  his  "Chronological  History  of  New  England,  in 
the  Form  of  Annals," — the  most  genuine  and  the  most 
meritorious  piece  of  historical  work  published  in  America 
up  to  that  date. 

1  The  Prince  Library  is  now  in  the  careful  and  generous  custody  of  the 
Boston  Public  Library.  An  admirable  catalogue  of  it  has  been  published 
under  the  superintendence  of  Justin  Winsor,  Boston,  1870. 

1  "Chron.  Hist.  N.  E."  Pref.  U. 

VOL.    II. — IO 


I46  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

His  plan  was  to  write  a  history  somewhat  in  the  manner 
of  Archbishop  Usher's  Annals ;  the  principal  features  be- 
ing  exactness,  brevity,  and  a  statement  of  events  in  the 
order  of  time :  an  austere  scheme,  both  for  writer  and  for 
reader,  "  comprising  only  facts  in  a  chronological  epitome, 
to  enlighten  the  understanding,"  and  repelling  all  "  arti- 
ficial ornaments  and  descriptions  to  raise  the  imagination 
and  affections." l 

He  was  a  devotee  to  historical  accuracy,  a  knight-errant 
of  precise  and  unadorned  fact,  an  historical  sceptic  before 
the  philosophy  of  historical  scepticism  was  born :  "  I  would 
not  take  the  least  iota  upon  trust,  if  possible ;  I  examined 
the  original  authors  I  could  meet  with."2  "Some  may 
think  me  rather  too  critical ;  others  that  I  relate  some  cir- 
cumstances too  minute.  ...  As  for  the  first,  I  think  a 
writer  of  facts  cannot  be  too  critical.  It  is  exactness  I 
aim  at,  and  would  not  have  the  least  mistake  if  possible 
pass  to  the  world."8  "In  short,  I  cite  my  vouchers  to 
every  passage ;  and  I  have  done  my  utmost,  first  to  find 
out  the  truth,  and  then  to  relate  it  in  the  clearest  order. 
I  have  labored  after  accuracy;  and  yet  I  dare  not  say  that 
I  am  without  mistake ;  nor  do  I  desire  the  reader  to  con- 
ceal any  he  may  possibly  find.  But  on  the  contrary  I  offer 
this  work  to  the  public  view,  that  it  may  be  perused  with 
the  most  critical  eye,  that  every  error  may  be  discovered, 
and  the  correction  published." 4 

Such  was  his  attitude  toward  historical  accuracy.  Nosr 
let  us  see  what  was  his  attitude  toward  historical  fairness. 
In  another  noble  passage  of  self-revelation,  he  says :  "  A* 
to  impartiality,  I  know  it  is  usual  for  the  writers  of  history 
to  assert  it,  some  in  their  prefaces,  others  in  the  front  of 
their  works;  some  in  the  strongest  terms,  who  have  beer 
notoriously  guilty  of  the  contrary ;  and  I  am  apt  to  think 
that  many  are  partial  who  are  insensible  of  it.  For  myself, 

'  "  Chron.  Hist.  N.  E."  Dedication.  *  IW<|.  Pref.  ir. 


THOMAS  PRINCE.  !47 

I  own  I  am  on  the  side  of  pure  Christianity;  as  also  of 
civil  and  religious  liberty,  and  this  for  the  low  as  well  as 
high,  for  the  laity  as  well  as  the  clergy ;  I  am  for  leaving 
every  one  to  the  freedom  of  worshipping  according  to  the 
light  of  his  conscience ;  and  for  extending  charity  to  every 
one  who  receives  the  gospel  as  the  rule  of  his  faith  and 
life ;  I  am  on  the  side  of  meekness,  patience,  gentleness, 
and  innocence.  And  I  hope  my  inclination  to  these  great 
principles  will  not  bias  me  to  a  misrecital  of  facts,  but 
rather  to  state  them  as  I  really  find  them  for  the  public 
benefit." ' 

In  carrying  out  his  plan  of  writing  the  history  of  his 
own  country,  it  seemed  to  him  right  to  present  it  in  its 
relations  to  the  precedent  history  of  all  the  world  ;  for  he 
held  that  the  story  of  New  England  was  not  some  isolated 
and  forlorn  chapter  in  the  appendix  of  the  book  of  time, 
but  an  integral  part  of  that  book,  bound  up  in  a  volume 
with  the  rest  in  logical  and  chronological  sequence  :  "  It 
may  be  grateful  to  many  readers  to  see  the  age  of  the 
world  when  this  part  of  the  earth  came  to  be  known  to 
the  other ;  and  the  line  of  time,  with  the  succession  of  the 
principal  persons,  events,  and  transactions,  which  had  been 
running  on  from  the  creation  to  the  settlement  of  this 
country  by  a  colony  from  England."*  Accordingly,  with 
great  pains  and  great  accuracy,  and  upon  a  close  study  of 
all  the  leading  systems  of  chronology,  as  well  as  of  all  the 
original  authors  in  Hebrew,  Greek,  and  Roman  history, 
he  proceeds  to  give  the  succession  of  the  world's  great 
events,  from  Adam,  "year  one,  first  month,  sixth  day,'* 
down  to  the  accession  of  James  the  First  of  England, 
year  sixteen  hundred  and  three,  third  month,  twenty, 
fourth  day.  At  last,  having  completed  this  immense  in- 
troduction, which  has  its  utility,  but  involved  a  sad  mis- 
calculation of  the  time  at  his  disposal,  and  likewise  proved 
to  be  a  porch  of  inordinate  size  for  his  unfinished  edifice, 

1  "Chron.  Hist.  N.  E."  Prcf.  x.  » Ibid.  Introd.  I. 


148  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

he  reaches  the  chronology  of  New  England,  of  which  the 
first  part  extends  from  the  accession  of  James  the  First 
to  the  settlement  of  Plymouth,  December  the  thirty-first, 
1620;  and  the  second  part,  from  that  date  to  events  in 
New  England  history  as  late  as  August  the  fifth,  1633.' 

Throughout  the  work  he  is  faithful  to  his  promise  of 
giving  only  nude  facts,  spurning  all  embellishments.  His 
entries  are  made  in  the  hard  and  compact  form  of  a  regis- 
ter, absolutely  unimaginative  and  unemotional ;  yet  as  he 
reaches  certain  great  epochs  of  history,  he  seems  unable 
to  keep  back  at  least  a  sentence  throbbing  with  suppressed 
feeling,  or  darting  with  the  thrust  of  a  sarcasm.  Sometimes, 
indeed,  this  parenthetical  sentence  broadens  into  a  para- 
graph, and  breathes  the  music  of  a  temperate  and  fine 
eloquence.  Thus,  when  about  to  usher  in  the  discovery 
of  America,  he  gives  himself  pause,  and  says :  "  We  are 
now  to  turn  our  eyes  to  the  west,  and  see  a  new  world  ap- 
pearing in  the  Atlantic  Ocean,  to  the  great  surprise  and 
entertainment  of  the  other.  Christopher  Columbus  or 
Colonus,  a  Genoese,  is  the  first  discoverer.  .  .  .  He  be- 
comes possessed  with  a  strong  persuasion  that  in  order 
to  balance  the  terraqueous  globe  and  proportion  the  seas 
and  lands  to  each  other,  there  must  needs  be  formed  a 
mighty  continent  on  the  other  side,  which  boldness,  art, 
and  resolution  would  soon  discover.  .  .  .  Ferdinand  and 
Isabella,  .  .  .  after  five  years'  urging,  are  at  last  prevailed 
upon  to  furnish  him  with  three  ships  and  ninety  men  for 
this  great  enterprise ;  which,  through  the  growing  opposi- 
tion of  his  fearful  mariners,  he  at  length  accomplishes,  to 
his  own  immortal  fame  and  the  infinite  advantage  of  in- 
numerable others."  2 


1  His  first  volume  abruptly  closed  at  Sept.  7,  1630,  on  warning  from  the 
printer  that,  if  he  went  further,  it  would  become  "  too  unsizable  ;  "  and  the 
remainder  of  his  fragment,  comprising  three  numbers,  was  afterward  pub- 
lished in  pamphlets.  These  are  reprinted  in  2  Mass.  Hist.  Soc.  Coll.  VII. 
^89-295  ;  also  in  S.  G.  Drake's  ed.  of  "  Chron.  Hist.  N.  E."  1852. 

8  "  Chron.  Hist.  N.  E  "  Introd.  78. 


THOMAS  PRINCE.  I49 

As  he  draws  near  to  the  time  of  the  settlement  of  New 
England,  he  again  stops,  and  takes  a  long  view,  and  draws 
a  long  breath  :  "  Having  passed  through  the  seven  great 
periods  of  time  from  the  creation  to  the  beginning  of  the 
British  empire,  with  the  discovery  of  that  Indian  shore 
which  is  soon  to  be  the  theatre  of  our  Chronology,  a  new 
face  of  things  appears  both  to  the  western  parts  of  Europe 
and  the  eastern  of  America.  .  .  .  Divers  attempts  are 
made  to  settle  this  rough  and  northern  country ;  first  by 
the  French,  .  .  .  and  then  by  the  English,  and  both  from 
mere  secular  views.  But  such  a  train  of  crosses  accom- 
pany these  designs  of  both  nations,  that  they  seem  to  give 
it  over  as  not  worth  the  planting ;  till  a  pious  people  of 
England,  not  there  allowed  to  worship  their  Maker  accord- 
ing to  his  institutions  only,  ...  are  spirited  to  attempt 
the  settlement."  '  "  So  there  were  just  one  hundred  and 
one  who  sailed  from  Plymouth  in  England ;  .  .  .  and  this 
is  the  solitary  number  who  for  an  undefiled  conscience 
and  the  love  of  a  pure  Christianity,  first  left  their  na- 
tive and  pleasant  land,  and  encountered  all  the  toils  and 
hazards  of  the  tumultuous  ocean,  in  search  of  some  un- 
cultivated region  in  North  Virginia,  where  they  might 
quietly  enjoy  their  religious  liberties,  and  transmit  them 
to  posterity,  in  hopes  none  would  follow  to  disturb  or  vex 
them." * 

Passages  like  these,  occurring  in  the  midst  of  long  and 
arid  patches  of  chronological  registration,  have  a  sweet  and 
stirring  tone  ;  yet  the  predominant  effect  of  the  book  is 
depressing.  The  publication  of  it  was  a  disappointment 
and  a  failure.  A  long  list  of  subscribers  had  shown  their 
interest  in  the  inception  of  his  great  work :  few  had  any 
interest  to  show  in  its  continuance.  Of  course  the  author 
was  discouraged.  Nearly  twenty  years  passed  by  be- 
fore he  had  the  heart  to  go  on  with  his  task ;  and  then 
age,  illness,  public  occupations,  were  too  heavy  upon  him. 

1  "  Chron.  Hist.  N.  E."  Part  I.  1-3.  *  Ibid.  86. 


!  50  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

Nevertheless,  even  as  a  fragment  the  «  Chronological  His- 
tory of  New  England  "  is  the  most  scholarly  piece  of  lit- 
erary work  wrought  in  America  during  the  colonial  time; 
and  in  the  particular  sphere  of  historical  writing,  it  repre- 
sents not  only  a  great  advance  upon  all  that  had  been 
achieved  among  us  before  its  time,  but  the  true  method, 
and  the  prophecy,  of  all  that  was  to  be  achieved  among 
us  afterward. 


V. 


In  1739,  three  years  after  the  publication  of  the  great 
historical  treatise  of  Thomas  Prince,  appeared  an  historical 
brochure,  which    deserves  remembrance    for  the  worthy 
quality  of  its  work,  and  as  a  token  of  the  spread  among  us 
of  genuine  methods  of  historical  inquiry.     This  is  "An 
Historical  Discourse"  by  John  Callender,1  minister  of  the 
First  Baptist  Church  of  Newport,  Rhode  Island.     It  is  a 
careful  and  well-written  sketch  of  the  history  of  Rhode 
Island  for  the  first  century  of  its  existence;  and  is  espe- 
cially notable  for  its  fine  antiquarian  spirit,  for  its  catho- 
licity of  tone,  and  for  the  poise  and  amenity  with  which 
the  author  refers  to  those  painful  facts  in  the  early  his- 
tory of    Massachusetts   that  had,   in   fact,   produced    the 
early  history  of  Rhode  Island.     His  prevalent  magnanim- 
ity of  statement  gives  greater  edge  and  power  to  his  occa- 
sional references  to  the  intolerance  which  had  once  embil 
tered  human  life  in  the  elder  commonwealth:  "In  reality 
the  true  grounds  of  liberty  of  conscience  were  not  then 
known  or  embraced  by  any  sect  or  party  of  Christians. 
So  that  it  was  not  singular  or  peculiar  in  those  peo- 
ple at  the  Massachusetts  to  think  themselves  bound   in 
conscience  to  use  the  sword  of  the  civil  magistrate  to  open 
the  understandings  of  heretics These  were 

t  Born  1707  ;  graduated  at  Harvard  1723  ;  minister  at  Newport  from  1731 
till  his  death'  ingI748;  his  "Historical  Discourse"  w« >  wntten  »  ,73., 
printed  in  I739;  ^printed  in  R.  I.  Hist.  Soc.  Coll.  IV.  45-176. 


WILLIAM  DOUGLASS.  151 

only  people  who  thought  they  were  doing  God  good  sen 
vice,  when  smiting  their  brethren  and  fellow-servants.  All 
other  Christian  sects  acted  generally  as  if  they  thought  this 
was  the  very  best  service  they  could  do  to  God,  and  the 
most  effectual  way  to  promote  the  gospel  of  peace,  and 
prove  themselves  the  true  and  genuine  disciples  of  Jesus 
Christ — of  Jesus  Christ,  who  hath  declared  his  kingdom 
was  not  of  this  world,  who  had  commanded  his  disciples 
to  call  no  man  master  on  earth,  who  had  forbidden  them 
to  exercise  lordship  over  each  other's  consciences."  l 


VI. 


A  work  which  has  made  for  itself  a  prominent  place  in 
the  literature  of  this  period,  and  which,  through  the  notice 
taken  of  it  by  Adam  Smith,  has  been  lifted  into  some  Euro- 
pean celebrity,  is  the  "  Summary,  Historical  and  Political, 
of  ...  the  British  Settlements  in  North  America."2  Its 
author  was  William  Douglass,  a  Scotsman,  who,  after  an 
ample  training  in  medicine  at  Leyden  and  at  Paris,  came 
to  Boston  in  1718,  he  being  then  about  twenty-seven  years 
of  age.  In  Boston  he  established  himself  as  a  physician  ; 
and  there  he  died  in  1752.  He  was  a  man  of  large  but 
heterogeneous  knowledge,  and  blessed  with  a  sovereign 
confidence  in  himself  and  his  own  opinions ;  and  being 
also  dogmatic,  intolerant,  of  quick  temper  and  boundless 
energy,  fiery  as  a  friend,  still  more  fiery  as  an  enemy,  fond 
of  strife,  glib  in  speech,  with  a  passion  for  rushing  into 
print,  his  life  was  one  prolonged  and  blissful  warfare  with 
all  persons  whom  he  could  pick  a  quarrel  with, — chiefly, 
his  own  professional  brethren,  likewise  the  clergy,  the 
magistrates,  and  the  successive  governors  of  the  colony. 

He  had  great  sagacity  and  shrewdness,  and  a  pitiless 


1  The  Discourse,  in  R.  I.  Hist.  Soc.  Coll.  IV.  70-71. 
*  Published  in  2  vols.  Boston,  1748-1753. 


1 52  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

way  of  dissecting  fashionable  enthusiasms  and  prejudices; 
a  keen,  racy,  original  diction  ;  infinite  courage  in  utter- 
ance. In  a  land  still  dominated  by  Calvinistic  orthodoxy, 
he  avowed  himself  a  rationalist,  saying  that  "  the  wise  and 
thinking  part  of  mankind  "  had  at  last  learned  "  to  regu- 
late themselves  by  natural  religion  only." l  He  praised 
David  Brainerd  as  "  a  true  and  zealous  missionary,"  but 
said  that  allowances  must  be  made  for  "  his  weak,  enthusi- 
astic turn  of  mind."2  He  condescended  to  call  the  apostle 
Eliot  a  good  man,  but  added  that  it  was  a  sheer  waste  of 
labor  for  him  to  translate  the  Bible  into  the  language  of  a 
petty  tribe  of  Indians  who  could  not  read  and  were  soon 
to  be  extinct.3  In  the  midst  of  the  devout  raptures  of  the 
people  over  Whitefield's  preaching,  Douglass  coolly  com- 
puted the  marketable  value  of  the  time  spent  by  them  in 
listening  to  this  "vagrant  enthusiast,"  and  announced  that 
every  exhortation  of  Whitefield  in  Boston,  by  diverting  la- 
borers from  the  work  by  which  they  supported  their  fam- 
ilies, was  a  damage  to  that  town  to  the  extent  of  about 
a  thousand  pounds  sterling.  No  sphere  of  life  was  safe 
from  his  intrusions ;  no  topic  escaped  the  puncture  of  his 
criticisms ;  he  was  always  ready  to  proclaim  his  opinions ; 
and  even  when  those  opinions  failed  to  be  justified  by 
events,  he  had  a  Falstaffian  assurance  in  standing  by  them 
still,  and  a  Falstaffian  wit  in  covering  up  the  awkward- 
ness of  his  discomfiture.  For  example,  on  account  of  his 
hostility  to  the  men  at  that  time  in  power,  he  publicly 
ridiculed  the  New  England  expedition  for  the  capture  of 
Cape  Breton,  declaring  that  the  scheme  was  a  folly,  and 
would  be  a  failure ;  and  when,  in  due  time,  the  news  came 
that  Cape  Breton  had  been  captured,  he  was  not  in  the 
least  disconcerted,  merely  remarking  that  he  was  entirely 
right  in  his  conjectures,  but  that  "  fortune  would  always 
wait  upon  blunderers  and  quacks."4 

The  larger  part  of  mankind  seemed  to  be  alike  in  this,. 

1  "Summary,"  I.  438.         3  Ibid.  II.  117. 

8  Ibid.  I.  172.  4  J.  Thacher,  "Am.  Med.  Biography,"  I.  256. 


WILLIAM  DOUGLASS. 


153 


that  they  were  the  objects  of  his  contempt;  none  more  so 
than  the  practitioners  of  medicine  in  New  England  in  his 
time  :  "  In  our  plantations,  a  practitioner,  bold,  rash,  im- 
pudent, a  liar,  basely  born  and  educated,  has  much  the 
advantage  of  an  honest,  cautious,  modest  gentleman.  In 
general  the  physical  practice  in  our  colonies  is  so  per- 
niciously bad,  that  excepting  in  surgery,  and  some  very 
acute  cases,  it  is  better  to  let  nature  under  a  proper  regi- 
men take  her  course,  .  .  .  than  to  trust  to  the  honesty 
and  sagacity  of  the  practitioner.  Our  American  practi. 
tioners  are  so  rash  and  officious,  the  saying  in  ...  Eccle- 
oiasticus  .  .  .  may  with  much  propriety  be  applied  to 
them  :  '  He  that  sinneth  before  his  Maker,  let  him  fall  into 
the  hand  of  the  physician.'  Frequently  there  is  more 
danger  from  the  physician  than  from  the  distemper.  .  .  . 
But  sometimes,  notwithstanding  of  malpractice,  nature 
gets  the  better  of  the  doctor,  and  the  patient  recovers. 
Our  practitioners  deal  much  in  quackery  and  quackish 
medicines,  as  requiring  no  labor  of  thought  or  composi- 
tion, and  highly  recommended  in  the  London  quack-bills — 
in  which  all  the  reading  of  many  of  our  practitioners  con- 
sists. ...  In  the  most  trifling  cases  they  use  a  routine  of 
practice.  When  I  first  arrived  in  New  England,  I  asked 
...  a  noted,  facetious  practitioner,  what  was  their  general 
method  of  practice.  He  told  me  their  practice  was  very 
uniform  :  bleeding,  vomiting,  blistering,  purging,  anodyne, 
and  so  forth  ;  if  the  illness  continued,  there  was  '  repeten- 
di ; '  and  finally  '  murderandi ; '  nature  was  never  to  be  con- 
sulted or  allowed  to  have  any  concern  in  the  affair.  What 
Sydenham  well  observes,  is  the  case  with  our  practition- 
ers :  '  JEger  nimia  medici  diligentia  ad  plures  migrat.'  "l 

As  an  illustration  of  the  amusing  audacity  of  quacks  in 
the  English  colonies,  he  also  cites  a  medical  advertise- 
ment, in  which,  among  other  nostrums,  the  doctor  an- 
nounces "  an  elegant  medicine  to  prevent  the  yellow  fever 

1  "  Summary,"  II.  351-352. 


154 


HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITER  A  TURE. 


and  dry  gripes  in  the  West  Indies ; "  and  this,  Douglass 
thinks,  is  only  to  be  equalled  by  a  similar  advertisement 
published  in  Jamaica,  immediately  after  an  earthquake 
had  done  great  destruction  there.  The  physician  offered 
to  the  public  "  pills  to  prevent  persons  or  their  effects  suf- 
fering by  earthquakes."  ' 

During  all  the  long  warfare  of  his  career  in  New  Eng- 
land, William  Douglass  kept  his  pen  constantly  wet  with 
ink,  producing  newspaper  articles,  pamphlets,  medical 
books ;  and  it  was  but  natural  that  a  man  of  his  versatile 
and  irrepressible  activity  should  try  his  hand  upon  what 
he  called  history.  The  book  which  we  have  already  men- 
tioned, and  for  which  Douglass  is  now  principally  remem- 
bered, is  the  evidence  of  this.  He  sincerely  believed  it  to 
be  history ;  and  with  an  amusing  unconsciousness  of  his 
own  traits,  he  ascribes  to  himself  nearly  all  the  qualities 
of  a  great  historian,  scarcely  one  of  which  he  was  in  pos- 
session of :  "I  have  no  personal  disregard  or  malice,  and 
do  write  of  the  present  times  as  if  these  things  had 
been  transacted  a  hundred  years  since."2  On  the  con- 
trary, he  was  nothing  if  not  partisan  and  malignant ;  and 
his  reports  of  contemporaneous  events  are  saturated  with 
the  fury  of  contemporaneous  passions.  In  truth,  he  is 
not  an  historian  at  all  ;  he  lacks  the  calmness  of  history, 
its  disinterestedness,  its  caution  and  reserve,  its  thorough- 
ness, its  accuracy,  its  nobility  of  expression.  His  style  is 
hurried,  slipshod,  irregular ;  his  materials  jumbled  to- 
gether in  the  hotchpotch  manner;  he  flits  from  topic  to 
topic  as  the  gust  strikes  him  ;  with  all  his  asserted  intel- 
lectual humility,  he  delights  to  exhibit  his  polyglot  profi- 
ciency, and  covers  his  pages  with  specks  of  quotation  from 
foreign  languages,  especially  Latin  and  French.  He  is 
essentially  a  journalist  and  pamphleteer.  He  is  hot,  per- 
sonal, caustic,  capricious ;  and  his  history  is  only  a  con- 
geries  of  pungent  and  racy  editorial  paragraphs. 

1  "  Summary,"  II.  352,  note.  9  Ibid.  I.  356. 


WILLIAM  DOUGLASS. 


155 


On  the  first  page  of  the  first  volume  of  his  "  Summary," 
he  announces  his  plan  for  making  the  book  interesting: 
"  Descriptions  and  bare  relations,  although  accurate  and 
instructive,  to  many  readers  are  insipid  and  tedious ;  there- 
fore a  little  seasoning  is  used.  Where  a  '  mica  salis '  occurs, 
may  it  not  be  disagreeable :  it  is  not  designed  with  any 
malicious,  invidious  view.  For  the  same  reason,  a  small 
digression,  but  not  impertinent  to  the  subject,  is  now  and 
then  made  use  of ;  as  also  some  short  illustrations."  As 
the  history  proceeds,  he  abundantly  fulfils  his  promise  of 
putting  "  a  little  seasoning  "  into  the  insipid  dish  of  plain 
narrative — the  seasoning  of  egotistic  and  sarcastic  person- 
alities. Moreover,  he  constantly  acts  as  the  chorus  to  his 
own  play ;  he  stops  its  movement,  in  order  to  explain 
something,  to  justify  his  method,  to  express  the  hope  that 
he  is  not  getting  tedious,  or  to  regret  that  he  is  violating 
his  intended  brevity,  and  that  he  is  "  prolix,"  and  that 
his  summary  "swells  too  much."  His  favorite  literary 
method  is  digression ;  and  he  employs  it  so  frequently 
that  when  he  does  chance  to  revert  to  historical  narration, 
the  latter  seems  a  sort  of  lapse  from  the  main  purpose  of 
the  book.  But,  as  usual  with  him,  finding  this  method 
convenient  to  himself,  he  stanchly  defends  it  as  the  only 
proper  one :  "  This  Pindaric  or  loose  way  of  writing  ought 
not  to  be  confined  to  lyric  poetry ;  it  seems  to  be  more 
agreeable  by  its  variety  and  turns,  than  a  rigid,  dry,  con- 
nected account  of  things." ' 

Perhaps  his  most  readable  passages  are  the  foot-notes, 
which  are  very  numerous,  and  are  reservoirs  for  his  private 
opinions — if  he  can  be  said  to  have  had  any — his  whims,  hob- 
bies, and  hostilities.  He  is  also  very  droll  in  such  passages 
of  the  text  as  contain  his  reasons  for  not  devoting  himself 
to  a  minute  and  wearisome  study  of  original  authorities 
upon  American  history.  Thus,  on  approaching  the  history 
of  New  England,  and  on  surveying  the  vast  extent  and 
complexity  of  the  subject,  he  relieves  himself  by  the  fol- 

1  "  Summary,"  I.  310. 


156  HISTORY  OF  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

lowing  comical  preliminary  groan  of  indignant  criticism : 
"  This  is  a  laborious  affair,  being  obliged  to  consult  manu- 
script records.  The  many  printed  accounts  are:  i.  Too 
credulous  and  superstitious.  2.  Too  trifling.  Must  the 
insipid  history  of  every  brute  ...  or  man-animal  be  trans- 
mitted to  posterity  ?  3.  The  accounts  of  every  white 
man  and  Indian  mutually  killed  or  otherwise  dead,  would 
swell  and  lower  history  so  much  as  to  render  the  perusal 
of  such  histories  (excepting  with  old  women  and  children) 
impracticable.  4.  The  succession  of  pious  pastors,  elders, 
and  deacons  in  the  several  townships,  parishes,  or  congre- 
gations I  leave  to  ecclesiastic  chronologers ;  canonization 
or  sainting  seems  not  consistent  with  our  Protestant  prin- 
ciples. 5.  The  printed  accounts  in  all  respects  are,  beyond 
all  excuse,  intolerably  erroneous."  * 

Whether  right  or  wrong  in  his  opinions,  he  is  never 
wanting  in  explicitness  in  stating  them.  He  has  a  multi- 
tude of  petted  animosities, — the  Indians,  the  French,  the 
Reverend  George  Whitefield,  the  Bishop  of  Cloyne  and 
that  prelate's  nostrum  of  tar-water,  paper-money,  and  so 
forth  ;  and  whenever,  in  the  zigzag  progress  of  his  dis- 
course, he  catches  a  glimpse  of  any  of  these  detested 
objects,  he  discharges  at  them  the  slugs  and  hot-shot  of 
his  vituperation. 

As  for  the  Indians,  "  excepting  speech,  which  is  natural 
to  mankind,  they  seem  to  have  been  only  a  gregarious 
sort  of  man-brutes ;  that  is,  they  lived  in  tribes  or  herds 
and  nations,  without  letters,  or  arts  further  than  to  acquire 
the  necessaries  of  life  ;  "  and  until  the  white  men  came  to 
America  and  brought  it  into  connection  with  the  civilized 
world,  "  America  and  the  moon  were  much  upon  the  same 
footing  with  respect  to  Europe,  Asia,  and  Africa." 2 

As  for  the  French,  they  "are  the  common  nuisance  and 
disturbers  of  Europe,  and  will  in  a  short  time  become 
the  same  in  America,  if  not  mutilated  at  home,  and  in 
America  fenced  off  from  us  by  ditches  and  walls,  that  is, 

1  "Summary,"  I.  361-362.  s  Ibid.  116. 


WILLIAM  DOUGLASS. 


157 


by  great  rivers  and  impracticable  mountains.  .  .  .  Their 
promises  and  faith  are  by  them  used  only  as  a  sort  of 
scaffolding,  which,  when  the  structure  is  finished,  or  project 
effected,  they  drop.  In  all  public  treaties  they  are  '  gens 
de  mauvaise  foi.'  " l 

As  for  the  Reverend  George  Whitefield,  he  is  "  an  insig- 
nificant person,  of  no  general  learning,  void  of  common 
prudence.  His  journals  are  a  rhapsody  of  Scripture-texts 
and  of  his  own  cant  expressions.  .  .  .  The  strength  of 
his  arguments  lay  in  his  lungs.  ...  He  and  his  disciples 
seemed  to  be  great  promoters  of  impulses,  ecstasies,  and 
wantonness  between  the  sexes.  Hypocritical  professions, 
vociferations,  and  itineracies,  are  devotional  quackery."  * 

As  for  the  Bishop  of  Cloyne,  he  "  was  an  enthusiast  in 
many  affairs  of  life,  not  confined  to  religion  and  the  edu- 
cation of  youth.  He  invaded  another  of  the  learned 
professions,  Medicine.  ...  He  published  a  book  called 
*  Siris,  ...  or  Tar-Water.'  .  .  .  He  ought  to  have  checked 
this  officious  genius  (unless  in  his  own  profession-way  he 
had  acquired  this  nostrum  by  inspiration)  from  intruding 
into  the  affairs  of  a  distinct  profession."  3 

As  for  paper-money,  it  is  the  "  fallacious  and  designed 
cheat  of  a  plantation  government,"  *  an  "  iniquitous  or  base 
money  currency,"6  an  "  accursed  affair."6  "  I  desire  read- 
ers .  .  .  may  excuse  prolixity;  when  this  vile  chimera  or 
monster  comes  in  my  way,  I  cannot  contain  myself." 7 

Upon  the  whole,  William  Douglass  may  be  said  to  have 
succeeded  in  his  attempt  at  being  amusing,  if  not  at  being 
instructive.  His  book  contains  an  enormous  mass  of 
miscellaneous  but  untrustworthy  information  relating  to 
America  and  the  rest  of  the  world  ;  and  our  present  inter- 
est in  it  is  chiefly  due  to  its  representation  of  the  author 
himself  ;  who,  certainly,  was  a  very  definite,  positive,  origi- 
nal, and  self-centred  person,  never  the  echo  or  the  shadow 
of  one. 

1  "Summary,"  I.  9-3.      *  Ibid.  II.  141-142.     *  Ibid  I.  149-151. 
1  Ibid.  I.  310.    •  Ibid.  I.  334.    •  Ibid.  II.  13.    '  Ibid.  I.  499. 


CHAPTER   XV. 

NEW   ENGLAND:   THE   PULPIT   IN  LITERATURE. 

I. — Continued  ascendency  of  the  clergy — Their  full  maintenance  of  the  grand 
traits  of  their  predecessors, — manliness,  scholarship,  thoughtfulness,  elo- 
quence— Their  improvement  upon  their  predecessors  in  breadth,  and  in 
social  and  literary  urbanity. 

II. — John  Higginson — Sketch  of  him  by  John  Dunton — The  power  of  his 
character  and  of  his  long  life — His  election-sermon — His  "  Attestation  " 
to  the  "  Magnalia." 

III. — William  Stoughton,  preacher  and  statesman — His  "Narrative  of  the 
Proceedings  of  Andros  " — His  discourse  on  "New  England's  True  In- 
terest not  to  Lie" — Its  literary  ability — Its  courage. 

IV. — Urian  Oakes — His  greatness  in  prose  as  well  as  in  verse — Contempo- 
raneous estimates  of  him — His  first  artillery-sermon — Its  great  eloquence 
— Its  delineation  of  the  Christian  soldier — His  election-sermon — His 
second  artillery-sermon. 

V. — Samuel  Willard — His  "  Complete  Body  of  Divinity" — His  career — His 
theological  lectures — Their  great  influence — Their  publication  in  1726  in 
the  first  American  folio — Strong  qualities  of  the  book. 

VI. — Solomon  Stoddard — His  activity  as  a  writer — His  special  reputation  for 
soundness  of  judgment — His  "Answer  to  Some  Cases  of  Conscience  re- 
specting the  Country  " — The  sinfulness  of  long  hair  and  of  periwigs — 
Condemnation  of  other  frivolities. 

VII. — Benjamin  Colman — His  great  contemporaneous  influence  in  church 
and  state — His  fine  culture — His  residence  in  England — His  particular 
friendships  there — His  return  to  Boston — His  long  and  prosperous  public 
career — His  discourses — Their  literary  polish — His  charitable  spirit. 

VIII. — John  Barnard  of  Marblehead — His  versatile  culture — His  eminence 
— His  intellectual  traits — His  volumes  of  sermons — His  gentlemanly 
treatment  of  sinners. 

IX. — Jonathan  Edwards — Outline  of  his  life — His  qualities,  spiritual  and 
intellectual — His  precocity  in  metaphysics,  and  in  physics — His  juvenile 
writings — His  more  mature  studies  in  science — His  spiritual  self-discipline 
— His  resolutions — The  sorrows  of  his  life — Habits  as  a  student  and 
thinker — His  power  as  a  preacher — Analysis  of  his  method  in  discourse — 
"  Sinners  in  the  Hands  of  an  Angry  God" — His  literary  characteristics. 

X. — Mather  Byles — A  scene  in  Hollis  Street  Church  early  in  the  Revolution 
— His  brilliant  career  before  the  Revolution — His  versatility — The  mis- 

158 


CLERGY  OF  NEW  ENGLAND.  !59 

fortune  of  his  later  reputation  as  a  jester — A  great  pulpit-orator — His 
literary  qualities — His  exposition  of  the  preacher's  character — His  favorite 
themes — Passages  from  his  sermons. 

XI. — Jonathan  Mayhew — The  lines  of  his  influence — Estimate  of  him  by 
John  Adams — Charles  Chauncey — His  trails — His  hatred  of  inaccurate 
and  emotional  utterance — His  contempt  for  Whitefield — His  discourse  on 
"Enthusiasm"  —  His  "Seasonable  Thoughts"  —  His  portrait  of  the 
enthusiast 


IN  our  progress  over  the  various  fields  of  literature  in 
New  England  during  the  colonial  time,  we  encounter  not 
one  form  of  writing  in  which  we  are  permitted  to  lose 
sight  of  the  clergy  of  New  England, — their  tireless  and 
versatile  activity,  their  learning,  their  force  of  brain,  their 
force  of  character.  But  we  are  now  to  resume  our  study 
of  their  writings  in  the  field  that  was  peculiarly  their  own, 
— that  of  theological  and  religious  exposition. 

As  we  have  already  seen,  the  immigrant  clergy  of  New 
England — the  founders  of  this  noble  and  brilliant  order 
— were,  in  nearly  all  qualities  of  personal  worth  and  great- 
ness, among  the  greatest  and  the  worthiest  of  their  time, 
in  the  mother-country, — mighty  scholars,  orators,  sages, 
saints.  And  by  far  the  most  wonderful  thing  about  these 
men  is,  that  they  were  able  to  convey  across  the  Atlantic, 
into  a  naked  wilderness,  all  the  essential  elements  of  that 
ancient  civilization  out  of  which  they  came  ;  and  at  once, 
to  raise  up  and  educate,  in  the  new  world,  a  line  of  mighty 
successors  in  their  sacred  office,  without  the  least  break  in 
the  sequence,  without  the  slightest  diminution  in  scholar- 
ship, in  eloquence,  in  intellectual  energy,  in  moral  power. 

It  cannot  be  doubted,  indeed,  that  the  great  divines  of 
the  immigrant  period — those  heroic  pastors  who  led  forth 
their  flocks  into  the  American  forests  and  founded  here  a 
new  empire — had  in  that  very  fact  an  enormous  histori- 
cal advantage  over  their  successors  in  the  ministry, — an  in- 
approachable prestige  and  renown.  Nevertheless,  a  study 
of  all  the  writings  produced  by  the  New  England  clergy 


j6o  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

from  the  years  of  the  settlement  to  the  years  of  the  Revo- 
lution, cannot  fail  to  convince  us  that  the  men  who  came 
after  the  Founders  were  as  great  as  they  :  nay,  that  while 
in  any  particulars  the  sons  and  the  sons'  sons  equalled  the 
Fathers,  in  some  particulars  they  outdid  them  ;  they  fully 
maintained  all  the  strong  and  lofty  traits  of  the  first  gen- 
eration— manliness,  scholarship,  thoughtfulness,  eloquence, 
purity — and  even  added  to  these  traits,  those  of  intel- 
lectual breadth,  of  secular  culture,  of  social  and  literary 
urbanity. 

II. 

In  the  year  1686,  John  Dunton  of  London  paid  a  visit 
to  Salem,  and  there  saw  the  senior  minister  of  that  place, 
the  aged  John  Higginson.  "  All  men  look  on  him,"  wrote 
Dunton,1  "  as  a  common  father;  and  on  old  age  for  his 
sake  as  a  reverend  thing.  He  is  eminent  for  learning,  hu- 
mility, charity,  and  all  those  shining  graces  that  adorn 
a  minister.  His  very  presence  and  face  puts  vice  out 
of  countenance.  He  is  now  in  his  eightieth  year,  yet 
preaches  every  Sunday ;  and  his  conversation  is  a  glimpse 
of  heaven."  This  benign  old  man  was  then  just  ten  years 
younger  than  Dunton  stated  ;  but  after  that,  he  lived  just 
twenty-two  years,  the  last  of  the  New  England  pioneers, 
the  father  of  all  the  faithful,  manifesting  to  the  end  the 
sweetness  and  strength  of  character  that  covered  with  un- 
wonted majesty  his  patriarchal  years. 

In  1629,  a  year  before  Boston  was  founded,  he  had  come 
to  Salem,  a  boy  of  thirteen,  with  his  father,  Francis  Hig- 
ginson ;  he  had  received  his  education  in  the  new  world  : 
after  many  years  of  service  as  school-master  and  preacher 
in  Connecticut,  he  had  returned  to  Salem,  in  1659 ;  and 
there  he  remained  the  rest  of  his  days,  in  charge  of  the 
church  that  his  father  had  founded.  He  had  great  author- 
ity in  all  the  land — the  authority  of  goodness,  of  wisdom, 

1  "  Life  and  Errors  of  J.  Dunton,"  I.  127-128. 


WILLIAM  STOUGHTON.  l6l 

and  of  ability.     His  earliest  publication  is  the  election, 
sermon    of  1663,   entitled  "The  Cause   of  God   and  his 
People  m   New  England ;  "  a  sturdy  effort  to  check  what 
«emed  to  him  the  torrent  of  worldliness  and  wealth-seek 
mg  there,  by  recalling  to  the  people  the  purpose  for  which 
their  fathers  had  founded  New  England:  "If 
any  man  amongst   us   make  religion  as  twelve  and  the 
Id  as  thirteen,  let  such  an  one  know  he  hath  neither  the 
spirit  of  a  true  New  England  man  nor  yet  of  a  sincere 
stian." '    It  is  a  sermon  that  has  the  impressiveness  im- 
i  by  a  clear,  earnest,  consecrated  mind;  but  is  with- 
t  special  literary  superiority.     His  other  publications 
seven  in  number,  are  all  upon  religious  topics,  either  ex' 
itory  or  historical ;  the  most  notable  being  his  "  Attes- 
tation "  to  the"Magnalia,"  dated   1697,  and  printed  as 
one  of  the  prefaces  of  that  book.     Many  sentences  of  this 
production  are  very  noble;  having  especially  some  of  the 
antique  qualities  of  thought  and  style  that  were  then  dying 
out  of  English  prose,-massiveness  of  meaning,  confidence 
the  invisible  goodness   and   truth,  unconsciousness  of 
cynicism,  a  seer-like  earnestness  of  tone,  the  quaint  diction 
dead  sages  and  saints,  a  gravity  and  reverberating  ful- 
ss  of  phrase,  the  expectation  of  intellectual  fortitude  in 
those  who  read. 


IIL 


During  the  last  thirty  years  of  the  seventeenth  century, 

William  Stoughton  was  a  conspicuous  statesman  of  New 

England,- his  great  wealth,  talent,  learning,  dignity,  and 

bhc  spirit,  winning  for  him  a  large  measure  of  the  public 

fidence.     He  held,  at  various  times,  all  the  great  offices 

the  commonwealth;  and  it  was  his  misfortune  to  be 

chief-justice  in  the  fatal  time  of  the  witchcraft  delusion. 

Unfortunately,  his  own  cool  judgment  was  utterly  over- 


1  The  Sermon,  u. 

VOL.    II.— II 


!62  HISTORY  OF  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

borne  in  that  epidemic  of  fury  and  of  folly  ;  and  he  be. 
came  a  protagonist  among  the  persecutors.  The  pitiless 
and  gratuitous  savagery  of  his  acts  as  a  magistrate,  tow- 
ard  those  innocent  and  helpless  creatures  who  fell  under 
a  public  accusation  half  malignant  and  half  lunatic,  have 
smirched  his  noble  name  with  uncleansable  dishonor. 

He  had  in  him  the  power  to  make  for  himself  a  great 
place  in  American  letters;  but  he  spent  his  principal  force 
in  outward  affairs.     Graduated  at  Harvard  in  1650,  at  the 
age  of  nineteen,   and  afterward   fellow   of  New  College, 
Oxford,  he  began  his  public  career  as  a  minister;    and 
having  in  that  profession  acquired   much  reputation,  he 
passed   out   of   it    into    politics.     Two    specimens   of   his 
ability  as  a  writer  have  come  down  to  us,  representing  the 
two  fields  of  sacred  and  secular  activity  to  which  in  sue- 
cession  he  devoted  his  life.     The  later  and  inferior  speci- 
men   is   "A  Narrative    of   the    Proceedings   of   Andros 
published  in  I69I,1—  a  clumsy  and  dull  performance.    The 
earlier  and  better  specimen  is,  indeed,  one  of  the  land- 
marks  of  literature  in  New  England  for  that  time,--tne 


election-sermon  preached  by  him  in  Boston,  in 
bears  the  striking  title,  «  New  England's  True  Interest,  not 
to  Lie  "     A  powerful  document  it  must  have  been,  in 
day  eloquent  after  the  fashion  of  those  times;  conserva- 
tive 'in  thought,  able  in  statement;  courageously  confront. 
ing  New  England  with  its  high  obligations  to  God  and  to 
itself,  and  accusing  it  of  a  drift  toward  shameful  degen- 
eracy in  morals,  piety,  and  manners;  and  it  contains  ,  o, 
sentence  that  has  become  classic  among  us.    The  doc  trine 
of  the  discourse,  he  first  expounds  in  the  minute  and  ted 
nical  style  of  the  seventeenth  century  sermon^ullde^  / 
and  as  usual,  the  chief  interest  is  reserved  for  the  app£ 
cation.     Here,   he  charges  the  people   of  New  England 
with  an  extraordinary  responsibility,-^  responsibility  d 

i  Included  also  among  the  reprints  known  as  the  '«  Andros  Tracts," 
Boston,  1868-1874. 


URIAN  OAKES.  ,63 

rived  from  their  own  extraordinary  character.  They  were 
picked  men,  he  tells  them ;  selected  by  God  himself  out  of 
the  common  herd  of  mortals :  "  God  sifted  a  whole  nation 
that  he  might  send  choice  grain  over  into  this  wilder- 
ness."1 Hence,  "it  is  a  solemn  conviction,  and  charge 
against  us  to  have  it  spoken,  as  it  must  be  spoken  in  the 
name  of  the  Lord  this  day,  O  New  England,  thy  God 
did  expect  better  things  from  thee  and  thy  children  ;  not 
worldliness  and  an  insatiable  desire  after  perishing  things ; 
not  whoredoms  and  fornications ;  not  revilings  and  drunk- 
enness ;  not  oaths  and  false  swearings ;  not  exactions  and 
oppressions;  not  slanderings  and  backbitings;  not  rude- 
ness and  incivility — a  degeneracy  from  the  good  manners 
of  the  Christian  world  ;  not  formality  and  profaneness,  to 
loathe  manna,  to  despise  holy  things,  to  grow  sermon- 
proof  and  ordinance-proof ;  not  contentions  and  disorders ; 
not  an  itching  after  new  things  and  ways ;  not  a  rigid 
Pharisaical  spirit;  not  a  contempt  of  superiors;  not  un- 
thankfulness  and  disrespect  to  instruments  of  choice  ser- 
vice ;  not  a  growing  weary  of  government,  and  a  drawing 
loose  in  the  yoke  of  God ;  not  these  things,  but  better 
things,  O  New  England,  hath  thy  God  expected  from 
thee.'" 

IV. 

In  our  study  of  the  verse-writers  of  New  England,  we 
have  already  met  with  Urian  Oakes,  whose  "  Elegy  upon 
the  Death  of  Thomas  Shepard  "  we  found  to  be  among 
the  few  examples  of  genuine  poetry  produced  in  America 
in  the  colonial  time.  But  his  principal  activity  was  as  a 
sermon-writer ;  and  in  that  capacity  he  had  no  superior 
among  us  during  the  seventeenth  or  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury. For  once,  Cotton  Mather's  fancifulness  struck  the 
happy  note  in  naming  him  "  the  Lactantius  of  New  Eng« 

1  The  Sermon,  19.  *  Ibid.  20. 


j64  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

land;"1  and  when,  in  another  place,  this  same  provincial 
pedant  declared  that  Urian  Oakes  "  was  an  Orpheus  that 
would  have  drawn  the  very  stones  to  discipline," 2  he  only 
smothered  under  an  antic  hyperbole  the  long-cherished 
tradition  concerning  those  marvellous  fascinations  of  liv- 
ing speech,  which  were  wielded  by  the  Cambridge  pastor, 
and  which  did  not  perish  even  when  uttering  themselves  in 
the  cold  oratory  of  print.  I  find  in  him  an  alert  and  forcible 
intelligence,  civility,  cosmopolitan  range  ;  an  expression, 
affluent,  nervous,  flexible  ;  a  condensed  energy  of  phrase ; 
the  epithets  that  are  born  of  original  and  poetic  insight ; 
the  gift  of  culminating  and  bright  statement,  crystallizing 
into  epigram. 

It  was  in  1672,  the  first  year  after  the  return  of  Urian 
Oakes  from  his  long  residence  in  the  mother-country,  that 
he  was  selected  to  give  the  annual  sermon 8  before  the 
artillery  company  of  Boston, — an  association  composed  of 
the  first  gentlemen  in  the  colony,  and  intended  to  cherish 
here  the  chivalric  traits  of  military  discipline  and  honor. 
In  speaking  to  such  an  audience,  the  orator  naturally  took 
as  his  theme  the  parallelisms  existing  between  the  true 
soldier  and  the  true  Christian.  Here  his  rhetoric  has  a 
martial  movement ;  his  sentences  ring  like  bugle-notes. 
There  is  high  exhilaration — the  dauntless  ecstasy  of  hero- 
ism and  triumph — in  the  words  with  which  he  sets  forth 
the  attributes  of  the  warrior  of  Christ :  "  He  is  a  man  of 
war  from  his  birth.  Neither  is  he  a  poor  naked  creature ; 
.  .  .  but  he  comes  into  the  new  world  in  his  suit  of  armor, 
armed  '  cap-a-pie,'  with  a  complete  armor  of  proof,  being 
vested  with  the  graces  of  the  spirit  of  Christ.  He  hath 
his  excellent  and  invincible  General,  .  .  .  and  hath  taken 
his  '  sacramentum  militare,'  his  oath  of  fidelity  and  obedi- 


*  "  Magnalia,"  II.  124.  *  Ibid.  116. 

8  This  was  printed  at  Cambridge  1674,  and  bore  a  title  characteristic  of  the 
age  rather  than  of  the  man:  "  The  Unconquerable,  All-conquering,  and  more 
than  Conquering  Soldier." 


URIAN  OAKES, 


I65 


ence  to  the  great  Lord  General.  He  hath  also  ...  his 
company  that  he  is  listed  into.  .  .  .  He  hath  his  banner 
to  fight  under.  ...  He  hath  his  arms  and  weapons,  offen- 
sive and  defensive,  to  fight  withal.  He  hath  his  soldierly 
qualifications  and  military  accomplishments, — courage, 
skill,  patience,  hope  of  victory,  faithfulness  to  ...  his 
General,  orderliness,  disposition  to  endure  hardship,  or 
whatever  else  may  be  mentioned,  ...  a  soldier  well  ap- 
pointed ...  to  dispute  it  out  with  any  adversary." ' 

Then,  too,  as  every  good  man  is  a  soldier,  so,  by  a  sad 
antithesis,  is  every  bad  man  a  soldier  likewise ;  "  but  he 
fights  against  God,  strengthens  himself  and  stretches  out 
his  hand  against  the  Almighty.  ...  He  puts  on  the  whole 
armor  of  the  Devil,  that  he  may  be  able  to  stand  against 
all  the  shocks  of  conscience,  or  encounters  of  the  word 
and  spirit  of  God,  and  fight  it  out  to  the  last  with  the  In- 
finite Majesty,  to  the  everlasting  ruin  of  his  immortal 
soul."1  In  the  long,  bitter  battle  which  is  waging  here, 
they  who  are  Christ's  men  find  that  their  enemy,  "  the 
world,  can  put  on  two  faces,  and  change  its  countenance 
as  occasion  serves.  If  feigned,  flattering  smiles  will  not 
do,  then  killing  frowns  shall,  if  it  be  possible."8  But,  in- 
deed, this  will  not  be  possible  ;  for  Christians  "  may  be 
opposed,  combated,  and  contended  withal,  but  never 
routed,  run  down,  totally  defeated,  or  overthrown."4 
"  Death  may  kill  them  but  cannot  conquer  them." 8  And 
the  supreme  moment  for  all  Christian  soldiers  is,  of  course, 
that  endless  one,  which  comes  after  the  fierce  campaigns 
of  earth  are  over,  and  when  they  pass  under  triumphal 
arches  to  the  repose  of  victory  in  heaven.  They  "  have 
fought  their  fight,  and  finished  the  course  of  their  warfare, 
and  are  .  .  .  out  of  push  of  pike  or  gunshot,  far  enough 
removed  out  of  the  reach  of  their  adversaries.  They  are 
marched  out  of  the  field,  and  discharged  from  any  further 
service,  and  enjoying  their  reward." ' 

1  The  Sermon,  5.  *  Ibid.  5.  *  Ibid.  9. 

4  Ibid,  a.  •  Ibid.  16.  •  Ibid  4. 


l66  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

It  is  not  strange  that  the  new  pastor  of  Cambridge,  hav- 
ing made  so  thrilling  and  masterly  an  oration  at  the  great 
military  anniversary  of  the  colony,  should  have  been  sum- 
moned to  be  the  orator  at  its  next  great  political  anniver- 
sary. Accordingly,  in  1673,  we  find  him  giving  the  elec- 
tion-sermon, taking  as  his  subject  the  moral  perils  that 
then  hung  over  New  England.  He  entitled  his  discourse, 
"  New  England  Pleaded  With  ;  "  ]  a  brave  and  manly  ex- 
position of  the  evil  tendencies  then  developed  there, — 
formality,  spiritual  listlessness,  immorality,  irreverence, 
worldliness,  greed  of  wealth,  sensualism,  love  of  display  in 
dress,  vanity,  ostentation.  As  a  literary  effort,  this  dis- 
course is  not  so  brilliant  as  the  artillery-sermon  ;  has  not  so 
many  majestic  and  resounding  passages ;  but  it  is  very 
searching,  pungent,  and  strong,  and  must  have  produced  a 
vast  impression  as  its  invectives  first  leaped,  in  passion- 
ate and  pathetic  tones,  from  the  lips  of  the  prophet,  and 
glanced  down  among  a  people  most  sensitive  to  such  accu- 
sations. There  are  in  it  also  some  sentences  of  broad 
scope,  worthy  to  become  national  aphorisms.  This  is  one : 
"  It  is  the  property  of  Englishmen,  much  more  of  religious 
Englishmen,  and  should  be  most  of  all  of  religious  New- 
Englishmen,  to  be  tenacious  and  tender  of  their  liberties."2 

Four  years  afterward,  this  matchless  preacher  stood 
forth  again  as  the  orator  of  the  artillery-company,  giving 
them  a  sermon  on  "  The  Sovereign  Efficacy  of  Divine 
Providence."3  Addressing  the  foremost  military  organiza- 
tion in  the  country,  and  reviewing  the  havoc  and  agony  of 
the  war  just  closed  with  the  Indians  under  Philip,  he  con- 
fesses his  humiliation,  that  with  all  their  own  military 
training  and  their  various  other  superiorities,  they  could 
have  been  so  terrified  and  so  injured  by  such  enemies;  but 
he  warns  his  fellow-countrymen  of  obligations  even  more 
sacred  than  those  of  a  soldier,  and  of  a  hostility  even  more 


1  Printed,  Cambridge,  1673.  *  The  Sermon,  50. 

1  Printed  in  1682,  after  the  author's  death,  with  a  preface  by  John  Sherman, 


SAMUEL   WILLARD.  167 

terrible  than  that  of  the  red  men :  "  New  England  hath 
enemies  enough  on  earth  and  in  hell ;  woe  to  us  if  we  make 
God  in  heaven  our  enemy  also." l 


V. 

In  the  year  1726,  the  men  of  books  in  New  England 
noted  with  considerable  exultation,  as  a  sign  of  national 
progress,  the  issue  from  an  American  printing-press,  of  a 
huge  folio  volume, — the  largest  that  had  ever  been  printed 
in  this  country.  It  bore  this  well-deserved  title,  "  A  Com- 
plete Body  of  Divinity."  Within  its  nine  hundred  and 
fourteen  pages, — each  page  having  two  columns  in  small 
and  compact  type, — it  held  "  two  hundred  and  fifty  ex- 
pository lectures  on  the  Assembly's  Shorter  Catechism," 
all  written  out  and  delivered  in  order  by  one  busy  man, 
during  a  period  of  nineteen  years.  That  man  was  Samuel 
Willard,  himself,  like  his  book,  a  body  of  divinity;  a  man 
of  inexpressible  authority,  in  those  days,  throughout  all 
the  land.  He  was  born  in  1640,  in  the  woods  of  Concord ; 
in  1659  he  was  graduated  at  Harvard;  he  was  settled  in 
the  ministry,  first  at  Groton,  and  then  at  the  South 
Church,  Boston  ;  he  opposed  the  witchcraft  persecutions  ; 
he  succeeded  Increase  Mather  in  the  presidency  of  Har- 
vard College,  adding  that  service  to  his  work  as  pastor ;  all 
his  lifetime,  he  was  most  fruitful  in  religious  writings, 
.printed  and  unprinted  ;  and  he  died  in  1707.  At  his  fu- 
neral, Ebenezer  Pemberton,  his  colleague,  stood  up  and 
spoke  of  him,  as  one  "  who  had  been  for  so  long  a  time  the 
light,  joy,  and  glory  of  the  place,"  and  whose  death  was 
•'  an  awful  rebuke  of  heaven  upon  this  whole  land." 

Nineteen  years  before  his  death,  he  began  to  give  at  his 
own  church,  on  Tuesday  afternoons,  once  a  month,  an 
elaborate  lecture  on  theology.  His  was  a  mind  formed 
for  theological  method.  He  did  not  desire  to  impose 

1  The  Sermon,  40. 


1 68  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITER  A  TURE. 

upon  himself  or  upon  any  one  a  slavish  submission  to  a 
theological  system  ;  he  only  wished  to  get  for  himself  and 
others  the  clearness  and  vigor  and  practical  utility  that 
come  from  putting  one's  most  careful  ideas  into  orderly 
combination.  He  was  a  theological  drill-sergeant.  He 
was  also  a  truly  great  divine.  In  the  lectures  upon  system- 
atic theology,  which  he  thus  began  in  1688,  and  continued 
unflinchingly  till  he  died,  his  object  was  to  move  step  by 
step  around  "  the  whole  circle  of  religion."  The  fame  of 
his  lucid  talks  on  those  great  themes,  soon  flew  abroad, 
and  drew  to  him  a  large,  permanent  audience  of  the 
learned  and  the  unlearned ;  and  after  his  death,  theologi- 
cal students  and  others  kept  clamoring  for  the  publication 
of  those  talks.  In  1726,  all  such  persons  were  gratified. 

"A  Complete  Body  of  Divinity"  is  a  vast  book,  in  all 
senses;  by  no  one  to  be  trifled  with.  Let  us  salute  it 
with  uncovered  heads.  The  attempted  perusal  of  all 
these  nine  hundred  and  fourteen  double-columned  pages, 
was,  for  many  a  theological  scholar  of  the  last  century,  a 
liberal  education — and  a  training  in  every  heroic  and 
heavenly  virtue.  Along  the  pages  of  the  venerable  copy 
that  I  have  used — the  copy  which  Jeremiah  Dummer,  of 
the  Middle  Temple,  London,  sent  over  in  1727  as  a  gift 
to  Yale  College — I  find  fading  memorials  of  the  toil,  and 
aspiration,  and  triumph,  with  which  numerous  worthy 
young  divines  of  the  last  age  grappled  with  the  task  of 
reading  the  book  through ;  but  on  the  blank  leaf  at  the 
end,  are  only  two  inscriptions  of  final  victory :  "  Lyman 
perlegit,  1742,"  and  "  Timothy  Pitkin  perlegit,  A.D.,  1765." 
Doubtless,  both  these  heroes  have  long  since  had  their 
reward,  and  have  entered  into  rest,  which  they  sorely 
needed ;  and  the  others  perished  by  the  way. 

The  thought  and  expression  of  this  literary  mammoth 
are  lucid,  firm,  close.  The  author  moves  over  the  great 
spaces  of  his  subject  with  a  calm  and  commanding  tread, 
as  of  one  well  assured  both  of  himself  and  of  the  ground 
he  walked  on.  His  object  seemed  to  be,  not  merely  to 


SOLOMON  STODDARD.  ify 

enlighten  the  mind,  but  to  elevate  the  character  and  the 
life;  and  whenever,  in  the  discussion  of  a  topic,  he  has 
finished  the  merely  logical  process,  he  advances  at  once  to 
the  practical  bearings  of  it,  and  urges  upon  his  hearers  the 
deductions  of  a  moral  logic,  always  doing  this  earnestly, 
persuasively,  and  in  a  kingly  way.  The  whole  effect  is 
nutritious  to  brain  and  to  moral  sense ;  and  the  book 
might  still  serve  to  make  men  good  Christians  as  well  as 
good  theologians — if  only  there  were  still  left  upon  the 
earth  the  men  capable  of  reading  it. 


VI. 

SOLOMON  STODDARD  was  born  in  Boston,  in  1643,  his 
father  being  an  eminent  merchant  and  politician  of  that 
city,  and  his  mother  a  sister  of  Sir  George  Downing.  He 
was  graduated  at  Harvard  Co:.j^e  in  1662,  and  was  settled 
in  the  ministry  at  Northampton  from  1669  until  his  death  in 
1730:  a  man  of  reverend  look,  strong  judgment,  industry, 
learning,  uncommon  logical  faculty ;  "  for  some  years  the 
most  aged  minister  in  the  province,  ...  a  Peter  here 
among  the  disciples  and  ministers  of  our  Lord  Jesus,  very 
much  our  primate  and  a  prince  among  us." '  He  seems  not 
to  have  published  anything  until  he  was  past  fifty  years  of 
age ;  but  from  that  time  onward,  his  publications  were  nu- 
merous, in  the  form  of  sermons,  controversial  pamphlets, 
and  treatises  relating  to  theology  and  to  personal  conduct. 
His  mental  vision  was  a  singularly  clear  one;  and  per- 
sons enveloped  in  various  sorts  of  theological  and  ethical 
fog,  were  much  inclined  to  depend  on  his  superior  eye- 
sight. Thus,  in  1722,  he  published  a  little  book  called 
"  An  Answer  to  Some  Cases  of  Conscience  respecting  the 
Country;"  wherein  he  solves  ten  great  questions  apper- 
taining to  New  England  casuistry.  Some  of  these  ques- 

1  Benjamin  Colman,  Sermon  on  Death  of  Stoddard,  quoted  in  W.  E 
Sprague,  "  Annals  of  Am.  Pulpit, **  I.  174. 


1 70  HIS  TOR  Y  OF  A  M ERIC  A  N  LI  TERA  TURE. 

tions  are:  "What  right  doth  belong  to  the  Sabbath?" 
"  At  what  time  of  the  evening  doth  the  Sabbath  begin  ?  " 
"  Did  we  any  wrong  to  the  Indians,  in  buying  their  land 
at  a  small  price  ?  "  "  Is  it  lawful  for  men  to  set  their  dwell- 
ing-houses  at  such  a  distance  from  the  place  of  public 
worship  that  they  and  their  families  cannot  attend  it  ?  " 
Above  all,  "  Is  it  lawful  to  wear  long  hair?  "  Upon  this 
latter  agitating  theme,  the  excellent  Mr.  Stoddard  has  no 
uncertainty.  The  thing  "  seems  utterly  unlawful.  ...  It 
is  a  great  burden  and  cumber ;  it  is  effeminacy  and  a  vast 
expense,  ...  a  moral  evil.  ...  It  was  a  part  of  the  ca- 
lamity that  came  upon  Nebuchadnezzar  that  his  hairs  were 
grown  like  eagles'  feathers,  and  his  nails  like  birds'  claws."1 
But  the  ingenuity  of  Satan  is  tireless ;  and  being  routed  in 
the  argument  concerning  long  hair,  he  suggests  to  the  de- 
praved minds  of  men  that,  even  if  they  must  crop  their 
heads  close,  they  may  still  cover  them  up  with  periwigs : 
therefore,  "  Is  it  lawful  to  wear  periwigs  ?  "  "I  judge  there 
is  abundance  of  sin  in  this  country  in  wearing  periwigs. 
Particularly  in  these  two  things :  First,  when  men  do  wear 
them  needlessly,  in  compliance  with  fashion.  Their  own 
hair  is  sufficient  for  all  those  ends  that  God  has  given  hair 
for.  One  man's  hair  is  comelier  than  another's.  .  .  .  Some 
cut  off  their  own  because  of  the  color — it  is  red  or  gray ; 
some  because  it  is  straight ;  and  some  only  because  it  is 
their  own.  Secondly,  when  those  that  may  have  just  oc- 
casion to  wear  them,  do  wear  them  in  such  a  ruffianly  way 
as  it  would  be  utterly  unlawful  to  wear  their  own  hair  in. 
Some  of  them  are  of  an  unreasonable  length  ;  and  gener- 
ally they  are  extravagant  as  to  their  bushiness.  .  .  .  The 
practice  seems  to  me  to  have  these  four  evils  in  it :  I.  It 
is  an  uncontentedness  with  that  provision  that  God  has 
made  for  men.  .  .  .  When  God  has  given  to  men  such 
hair  as  is  suitable  to  answer  the  ends  of  hair,  it  seems  to 
be  a  despising  of  the  goodness  of  God  to  cut  it  off,  in  com- 

1  "  An  Answer,"  etc.  4-5. 


BEX  JAM  IN  COLMAN.  iji 

pliance  with  a  vain  fashion.  2.  It  is  wastefulness.  .  .  . 
3.  It  is  pride.  ...  4.  It  is  contrary  to  gravity.  .  .  . 
This  practice  makes  them  look  as  if  they  were  more  dis- 
posed to  court  a  maid  than  to  bear  upon  their  hearts  the 
weighty  concernments  of  God's  kingdom."1  "There  be 
many  other  practices  that  are  plainly  contrary  to  the  light 
of  nature.  Hooped  petticoats  have  something  of  naked- 
ness ;  mixed  dances  are  incentives  to  lust ;  compotations 
in  private  houses  is  a  drunken  practice."  * 

VII. 

For  nearly  the  entire  first  half  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury, there  was  in  Boston  a  minister  of  one  of  its  churches, 
Benjamin  Colman,  who,  by  an  exquisite  union  of  strength 
and  tenderness,  the  tact  of  the  politician,  the  sincerity  of 
the  saint,  the  magical  and  captivating  might  of  the  orator, 
held  an  unsurpassed  ascendency  over  his  contemporaries. 
He  was  organized  to  be  a  conqueror  of  his  kind,  through 
their  brains  and  their  hearts.  In  person  above  the  com- 
mon height,  delicate  in  shape,  of  fair  complexion,  with  the 
dress  and  bearing  of  an  accomplished  gentleman,  he  had 
a  "  peculiar  flame  and  dignity  in  his  eye  ;  "  his  presence 
instantly  unlocked  all  minds  as  by  something  benign, 
graceful,  and  venerable.  Some  of  his  associates,  who  out- 
lived him,  and  who  wrote  the  introduction  to  his  biog- 
raphy that  appeared  two  years  after  his  death,  say  that 
no  written  description  can  convey  an  idea  of  his  personal 
charm  and  power,  either  in  private  or  in  public.  They 
speak  of  his  conversation  as  "  admirably  polished  and 
courtly ; "  of  his  incomparable  eloquence  in  the  pulpit ;  of 
his  earnestness  and  refinement ;  the  inimitable  power  and 
sweetness  of  his  elocution  ;  the  ardor  of  his  imagination  ; 
the  rapture  of  his  impassioned  and  devout  speech.  As  a 
clergyman,  there  were  utilities  in  his  life  that  reached  far 

1  "  An  Answer,"  etc.  6-7.  *  Ibid.  15. 


172  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITER  A  TURE. 

beyond  those  usually  exerted  by  those  in  his  profession, 
and  in  times  of  need,  he  was  a  pillar  of  state.  Passing 
his  days  in  an  atmosphere  charged  with  theological  sullen- 
ness  and  acrimony,  he  was  both  orthodox  and  charitable ; 
his  personal  breadth  burst  the  hoops  of  his  creed ;  he  was 
human  first,  and  clerical  afterward. 

His  education  was  a  wise  and  happy  one — the  education 
of  books  and  of  life.  He  was  born  in  Boston,  in  1673  ; 
was  graduated  at  Harvard,  in  1692 ;  and  after  three  years 
of  theological  study,  with  some  real  work  as  a  preacher, 
he  set  out  for  Europe,  intending  to  gain  wisdom  by  look- 
ing upon  the  wisdom  of  the  world.  It  was  a  time  of  war 
between  England  and  France  ;  and  on  the  voyage,  his 
ship  was  captured  by  a  French  privateer,  after  a  hard 
battle,  during  which  the  pale  young  preacher  fought 
bravely  on  deck  among  the  bravest.  Being  made  a  pris- 
oner, he  was  clothed  in  rags,  thrown  into  the  hold  among 
the  sailors,  taken  to  France,  and  suffered  there  most  bar- 
barous treatment  during  a  captivity  of  several  weeks.  At 
last,  he  was  exchanged  ;  he  made  his  way  to  England, 
where  he  remained  four  years.  He  was  heartily  welcomed 
there  by  the  most  eminent  of  the  dissenting  clergymen ; 
went  much  into  society ;  preached  with  great  acceptance 
at  Cambridge,  Bath,  and  elsewhere  ;  and  had  many  induce- 
ments to  remain  permanently  in  the  mother-country.  He 
was  a  particular  favorite  in  the  family  of  Sir  Henry  Ash- 
urst,  with  whose  daughter  he  appears  to  have  conducted, 
for  a  time,  a  gentle  and  clerical  flirtation.  This  young 
lady  once  desired  him  to  write  for  her  a  poem ;  and  in  re- 
sponse to  her  commands,  he  produced  some  playful  verses 
called  "  A  Quarrel  with  Fortune,"  wherein,  comparing  her 
to  a  taper  and  himself  to  a  fly,  he  intimates  his  own  peril 
in  fluttering  so  near  a  damsel  of  her  exalted  rank : 

"  So  have  I  seen  a  little,  silly  fly, 
Upon  a  blazing  taper  dart  and  die. 
The  foolish  insect,  ravished  with  so  bright 
And  fair  a  glory,  would  devour  the  light. 


BENJAMIN  COLMAN.  ij$ 

At  first,  he  wheels  about  the  threatening  fire, 

With  a  career  as  fleet  as  his  desire  ; 

This  ceremony  past,  he  joins  the  same, 

In  hopes  to  be  transformed,  himself,  to  flame; 

The  fiery,  circumambient  sparkles  glow, 

And  vainly  warn  him  of  his  overthrow. 

But  resolute  he'll  to  destruction  go. 

So,  mean-born  mortals,  such  as  I,  aspire, 

And  injure,  with  unhallowed  desire, 

The  glory  we  ought  only  to  admire. 

We  little  think  of  the  intense,  fierce  flame, 

That  gold  alone  is  proof  against  the  same  ; 

And  that  such  trash  as  we,  like  drossy  lead, 

Consume  before  it,  and  it  strikes  us  dead."  ' 

Subsequently,  in  England,  he  became  the  victim  of  a 
far  deeper  and  more  serious  passion.  During  his  residence 
in  Bath,  he  first  met  a  beautiful  and  accomplished  young 
woman,  Elizabeth  Singer  of  Frome,  who,  under  the  pseu- 
donym of  "  Philomela,"  was  just  then  beginning  to  attract 
notice  by  her  poems,  and  who  afterward,  rejecting  the  suit 
of  Matthew  Prior,  married  one  Thomas  Rowe,  and  had  a 
somewhat  distinguished  career  as  a  writer,  both  of  prose 
and  of  verse.  Colman's  acquaintance  with  this  brilliant 
woman  soon  became  very  intimate  and  interesting ;  had 
he  been  willing  to  remain  in  England,  it  is  said  that  he 
could  have  married  her ;  and  the  memory  of  the  passionate 
friendship  thus  formed  with  her,  cast  a  tint  of  romance 
over  the  remainder  of  his  life,  passed  beyond  the  sea. 
Long  after  his  return  to  America,  he  continued  his  cor- 
respondence with  her;  and  even  so  late  as  1708,  her  let- 
ters to  him  manifest  ardent  emotion :  she  called  him 
her  "  guardian  angel ;  "  said  that  only  "  the  language  of 
heaven  "  could  express  "  a  friendship  so  noble  "  as  theirs ; 
and  assured  him  that,  after  death,  her  friendship  for  him 
should  "  commence  a  more  exalted  ardor."  * 

Postponing,  however,  the  consummation  of  this  friend- 

1  E.  Turell,  Life  of  B.  Colman,  24-25.  •  Ibid.  49- 


1^4  HIS  TOR  y  Of  AMERICAN  LITER  A  TURE. 

ship  to  the  leisure  to  be  expected  in  paradise,  Benjamin 
Colman  returned,  in  1699,  to  the  more  urgent  vocation 
that  awaited  him  in  Boston,  where  he  took  charge  of  a 
new  church  founded  on  a  somewhat  liberal  platform  ;  serv- 
ing it  with  preeminent  success  as  long  as  he  lived,  nearly 
half  a  century ;  solacing  himself,  meantime,  for  the  tempo- 
rary loss  of  the  society  of  his  English  Philomela,  by  three 
very  excellent  American  wives. 

During  this  long  public  career,  his  contributions  to  the 
literature  of  his  country  were  most  abundant,  and  mainly 
in  the  form  of  sermons.  His  style  in  these  sermons 
is  fluent,  polished,  modern  in  tone,  Addisonian,  with  a 
rich  and  ample  movement.  He  had  formed  his  literary 
manner  by  the  study  of  English  literature,  and  in  his 
sermons  he  often  refers  to  the  masters  of  English  pulpit- 
eloquence, — to  Bishop  Pearson,  to  John  Howe,  to  "the 
late  excellent  Archbishop  Tillotson,"  whom  he  calls  "  that 
most  reverend  person,  the  greatest  example  of  charity 
and  moderation  that  the  age  produced."1  His  discourses 
abound  in  terse  and  felicitous  terms.  He  speaks  of  "  the 
dreggy,  cheap  pleasures  of  sin  ;  "  he  says  that  the  worldling 
acts  as  if  he  "esteemed  himself  only  of  the  upper  order  of 
brutes,  to  graze  with  and  perish  like  them."  Describing 
the  power  of  religion  to  adorn  the  body :  "  I  once  saw  a 
poor  old  man  in  this  country,  who  made  no  figure  but  for 
his  piety,  who  seemed,  already  on  his  death-bed,  to  have 
changed  his  wrinkled  face  for  Moses's  shining  one ;  and  I 
am  sure,  were  the  vainest  persons  by,  in  all  their  tawdry 
ornaments  of  body  as  well  as  real  beauty,  they  would  have 
looked  but  uncomely  and  deformed  compared  with  this 
venerable  man."  Describing  the  spiritual  warfare  of  the 
Christian,  he  says :  "  Men  must  wrestle  against  the  impor- 
tunities of  flesh  and  blood,  and  against  the  power  and 
policy  of  hell;  against  the  cravings  of  a  vitiated  nature 
fomented  by  the  world  and  the  devil."2 

1  "  Discourses  upon  the  Parable  of  the  Ten  Virgins,"  57.         *  Ibid.  90-91. 


JOHN  BARNARD.  ^5 

There  is  a  manly  and  sweet  catholicity  of  tone  in  his 
writings, — a  unique  quality  then :  "  It  is  indeed  best  to  err 
on  the  charitable  side ;  and  no  temper  is  more  hateful  than 
a  censorious,  jealous,  judging  one ;  suspecting  everybody 
of  evil  but  ourselves  and  a  few  we  are  fond  of ;  confining 
the  Church  of  Christ  to  a  narrow  compass,  and  salvation 
to  those  only  of  our  own  persuasion.  .  .  .  There  are  some 
practices  and  principles  that  look  catholic,  which,  though 
I  cannot  reason  myself  into,  yet  I  bear  a  secret  reverence 
to  in  others,  and  dare  not  for  the  world  speak  a  word 
against.  Their  souls  look  enlarged  to  me ;  and  mine  does 
so  the  more  to  myself,  for  not  daring  to  judge  them."1 


VIII. 

A  man  of  heroic  mould  both  in  body  and  in  mind — one 
of  the  clerical  Titans  of  our  later  colonial  period — was 
John  Barnard,  who,  in  the  year  1/70,  at  the  age  of  eighty- 
nine,  died  at  Marblehead,  after  sixty-eight  years  of  service 
as  a  preacher  in  New  England,  after  fifty-six  years  of  ser- 
vice as  a  preacher  in  that  particular  town.  Tall,  of  grace- 
ful proportions,  erect  even  under  the  burden  of  nearly 
ninety  years,  he  had  the  imperial  bearing  of  our  elder  New 
England  clergy,  the  stateliness  of  a  king,  touched  by  the 
intellectuality  of  a  scholar,  and  the  tenderness  of  a  saint. 
"  His  countenance  was  grand,"  wrote  his  associate,  William 
Whitwell, "  and  his  mien  majestic  ;  and  there  was  a  dignity 
in  his  whole  deportment.  ...  His  presence  restrained 
every  imprudent  sally  of  youth ;  and  when  the  aged  saw 
him,  they  arose  and  stood  up."8 

After  taking  his  first  degree  at  Harvard  College  in  1700, 
he  devoted  himself,  at  his  father's  house  in  Boston,  to  a 
wide  range  of  studies  in  preparation  for  the  Christian  min- 


1  "  Discourses  upon  the  Parable  of  the  Ten  Virgins,"  56-57. 
•  Funeral  Sermon  by  W.  Whitwell,  quoted  in  W.  B.  Sprague,  "  Annals  of 
Am.  Pulpit,"  I.  254. 


1 76  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITER  A  TURE. 

istry ;  he  began  preaching,  in  1701  ;  he  did  some  good  ser- 
vice for  his  country  as  a  military  chaplain,  in  1707;  he 
paid  a  visit  to  England,  in  1709,  remaining  there  sixteen 
months;  and  at  last,  in  1714,  ripened  by  multifarious  con- 
tact with  life  and  with  books,  he  began  his  pastorate  at 
Marblehead ;  where  he  advanced  year  by  year  to  a  com- 
manding reputation  throughout  the  country.  His  great 
trait  was  energy,  physical  and  mental,  impelling  him  to 
the  mastery  of  all  human  knowledge.  He  had  the  usual 
scholarly  attainments  in  the  ancient  languages ;  he  was 
able  to  deal  with  the  most  subtile  and  rugged  problems  in 
Biblical  criticism  and  in  divinity ;  all  his  life,  he  pursued 
the  study  of  the  higher  mathematics,  for  which  he  had 
peculiar  aptitude ;  he  was  an  expert  in  the  theory  and 
practice  of  music;  he  gave  great  attention  to  architec- 
ture ;  and  living  in  a  town  where  the  building  and  sailing 
of  ships  were  the  principal  employments  of  the  people,  he 
astonished  them  by  his  knowledge  of  their  own  mysteries, 
and  was  able  to  serve  them  by  the  execution  of  the  most 
artistic  and  improved  models  for  ships. 

His  intellectual  activity,  shown  in  so  many  other  direc- 
tions, was  shown  also  in  authorship.  He  published,  in 
1752,  a  metrical  version  of  the  Psalms;  he  wrote,  in  1768, 
a  sketch  of  the  eminent  ministers  he  had  known  in  New 
England ;  and  besides  numerous  isolated  sermons,  he 
issued,  in  1727,  a  volume  entitled  "Sermons  on  Several 
Subjects,"  and  in  1747,  another  volume  entitled  "The  Im- 
perfection of  the  Creature  and  the  Excellency  of  the  Di- 
vine Commandment." 

The  foremost  impression  now  made  upon  one  by  these 
writings,  is  that  of  the  robustness,  the  intellectual  virility, 
of  the  man.  He  delights  in  hardy  tasks  of  thought;  he 
has  the  habit  of  confronting  real  difficulties  of  the  mind. 
There  is  a  mathematical  thoroughness,  a  lawyer-like  sense, 
in  his  handling  of  sacred  subjects;  he  grips  them  with  the 
clutch  of  conscious  power.  His  great  gift  lies  in  his  logic. 
He  excels  in  the  argumentative  presentation  and  defence 


JOKA  THAN  ED  WARDS.  ! 77 

of  Christian  doctrine.  Yet,  having  first  dealt  with  his  topic 
as  a  thing  in  debate,  and  having  vindicated  the  reasonable- 
ness of  his  cause,  he  casts  off  severity  of  style  and  often 
becomes  in  expression  ample,  glowing,  and  affluent. 

It  marks  the  literary  culture  of  the  man,  that  in  his 
writings  one  sees  traces  of  his  familiarity  not  only  with 
Calvin  and  the  great  Puritan  divines,  but  with  the  more 
liberal  writers  of  the  Anglican  church,  such  as  Tillotson, 
Stillingfleet,  and  More  ; '  and  that  he  should  even  enforce 
his  statements  by  the  authority  of  Epictetus.8  Though 
his  style  is  by  no  means  a  rich  or  imaginative  one,  it  is 
never  beggarly  or  harsh  ;  at  times,  it  has  a  tone  of  deli- 
cate grace,  the  artful  force  of  amenity  in  phrase  ;  as,  when 
he  speaks  of  one  who  "  hath  made  some  progress  in  the 
mysterious  art,  the  divine  lesson,  of  self-denial  ;8  or  when 
he  asks:  "  Is  there  anything  more  unbecoming  a  rational 
creature  than  to  be  a  slave  to  sense,  or  than  for  a  heaven- 
born  soul  to  be  the  Devil's  drudge?"4  "A  man  may  very 
much  stifle  and  suppress  the  remonstrances  of  his  own 
mind  by  the  hurry  and  noise  and  diversions  of  the  world ; 
but  can  he  always  command  silence  in  his  own  breast,  and 
stop  the  just  clamors  of  conscience  against  himself?"5 
He  has  a  felicity  of  urbane  statement,  sometimes  even 
a  quiet  sarcasm,  which  blend  effectively  with  the  vigor 
of  stern  denunciation ;  but  always  this  preacher  is  a  gen- 
tleman, even  in  his  frankest  professional  arraignment  of 
sinners. 

IX. 

JONATHAN  EDWARDS,  the  most  original  and  acute 
thinker  yet  produced  in  America,  was  born  at  East  Wind- 
sor, Connecticut,  in  1703  ;  was  graduated  at  Yale  College 
in  1720;  was  a  preacher  in  New  York  for  about  eight 
months  prior  to  April,  1723;  was  a  tutor  in  Yale  College 

1  "  Sermons  on  Several  Subjects,"  n,  38,  40,  41,  42.  120.          •  Ibid.  91. 
•  Ibid.  90.      «  "  The  Imperfection  of  the  Creature,"  etc.  230.     '  Ibid.  231. 
VOL.    II.— 12 


!78  HISTORY  OF  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

from  the  summer  of  1724  until  the  summer  of  1726; 
in  1727,  became  pastor  of  the  church  at  Northampton, 
and  so  continued  until  1750;  from  1751  until  1758,  was 
missionary  to  the  Indians  near  Stockbridge  ;  on  the  six- 
teenth of  February,  1758,  was  installed  as  president  of  the 
College  of  New  Jersey ;  and  died  a  few  weeks  afterward, 
namely,  on  the  twenty-second  of  March. 

Both  by  his  father  and  by  his  mother,  he  came  of  the 
gentlest  and  most  intellectual  stock  in  New  England.  In 
early  childhood,  he  began  to  manifest  those  powerful, 
lofty,  and  beautiful  endowments,  of  mind  and  of  character, 
that  afterward  distinguished  him, — spirituality,  conscien- 
tiousness, meekness,  simplicity,  disinterestedness,  and  a 
marvellous  capacity  for  the  acquisition  of  knowledge  and 
for  the  prosecution  of  independent  thought.  It  is,  per- 
haps, impossible  to  name  any  department  of  intellectual 
exertion,  in  which,  with  suitable  outward  facilities,  he  might 
not  have  achieved  supreme  distinction.  Certainly,  he  did 
enough  to  show  that  had  he  given  himself  to  mathematics,, 
or  to  physical  science,  or  to  languages,  or  to  literature — 
especially  the  literature  of  imagination  and  of  wit — he 
would  have  become  one  of  the  world's  masters.  The 
traditions  of  his  family,  the  circumstances  of  his  life,  the 
impulses  derived  from  his  education  and  from  the  models 
of  personal  greatness  before  his  eyes,  all  led  him  to  give 
himself  to  mental  science  and  divinity ;  and  in  mental  sci- 
ence and  divinity,  his  achievements  will  be  remembered  to 
the  end  of  time. 

As  a  mere  child,  he  read  not  only  the  ordinary  writings 
in  Latin,  Greek,  and  Hebrew,  but  the  most  abstruse  and 
subtile  writings  in  English ;  and  at  the  age  of  fourteen,  be- 
ing then  a  sophomore  in  Yale  College,  his  eye,  for  the  first 
time,  fell  upon  Locke's  "  Essay  on  the  Human  Under- 
standing,"— a  book  which  made  an  era  in  the  history  of  his 
mind,  and  which  he  read,  even  at  that  youthful  period, 
with  a  delight  greater,  he  tells  us,  "  than  the  most  greedy 
miser  finds  when  gathering  up  handfuls  of  silver  and  gold 


JONATHAN  EDWARDS.  ijg 

from  some  newly  discovered  treasure."1  Several  years  be- 
fore that  event,  however,  he  had  trained  himself  always 
to  read  with  pen  in  hand  ;  that  is,  to  be  productive  as  well 
as  receptive  in  reading,  and  not  only  to  think  for  himself 
as  he  went  along,  but  to  put  his  thinking  into  exact  lan- 
guage. The  result  of  such  training  as  that  upon  such  ge- 
nius as  his,  was  a  precocity,  both  in  original  thought  and 
in  the  expression  of  it,  that  is  perhaps  not  surpassed,  if  it 
is  equalled,  in  the  case  of  any  other  intellectual  prodigy. 

Thus,  when  Jonathan  Edwards  was  not  more  than 
twelve  years  old,  he  heard  that  some  one  in  the  neighbor- 
hood, probably  an  older  boy,  had  advanced  the  opinion 
that  the  soul  is  material  and  remains  with  the  body  till  the 
resurrection.  Instead  of  debating  the  question  in  crude, 
antagonistic  fashion,  our  young  metaphysician  wrote  to 
his  friend  a  playful  letter,  in  which  he  ironically  professes 
to  be  on  the  point  of  adopting  the  new  opinion,  and  hum- 
bly submits  for  solution  a  few  difficulties  that  still  stood  in 
his  way,  but  that  really  constituted  a  most  ingenious  and 
effective  exposure  of  the  logical  absurdities  of  the  doctrine 
proposed :  "  I  am  informed  that  you  have  advanced  a  no- 
tion that  the  soul  is  material,  and  attends  the  body  till 
the  resurrection.  As  I  am  a  professed  lover  of  novelty, 
you  must  imagine  I  am  very  much  entertained  by  this  dis- 
covery ;  which,  however  old  in  some  parts  of  the  world,  is 
new  to  us.  But  suffer  my  curiosity  a  little  further.  I 
would  know  the  manner  of  the  kingdom  before  I  swear 
allegiance.  First,  I  would  know  whether  this  material  soul 
keeps  with  [the  body]  in  the  coffin  ;  and  if  so,  whether  it 
might  not  be  convenient  to  build  a  repository  for  it.  In 
order  to  which,  I  would  know  what  shape  it  is  of,  whether 
round,  triangular,  or  four-square,  or  whether  it  is  a  number 
of  long  fine  strings  reaching  from  the  head  to  the  foot ;  and 
whether  it  does  not  live  a  very  discontented  life.  I  am 
afraid  when  the  coffin  gives  way,  the  earth  will  fall  in  and 

'  Works  of  J.  Edwards,  I.  30. 


I  So  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

crush  it.  But  if  it  should  choose  to  live  above  ground,  and 
hover  about  the  grave,  how  big  it  is ;  whether  it  covers  all 
the  body,  or  is  assigned  to  the  head,  or  breast,  or  how.  If 
it  covers  all  the  body,  what  it  does  when  another  body  is 
laid  upon  it ;  whether  the  first  gives  way,  and,  if  so,  where 
is  the  place  of  retreat.  But  suppose  that  souls  are  not  so 
big  but  that  ten  or  a  dozen  of  them  may  be  about  one 
body,  whether  they  will  not  quarrel  for  the  highest  place  ; 
and  as  I  insist  much  upon  my  honor  and  property,  I  would 
know  whether  I  must  quit  my  dear  head,  if  a  superior  soul 
comes  in  the  way.  But,  above  all,  I  am  concerned  to 
know  what  they  do  where  a  burying  place  has  been  filled 
twenty,  thirty,  or  an  hundred  times.  If  they  are  a  top  of 
one  another,  the  uppermost  will  be  so  far  off  that  it  can 
take  no  care  of  the  body.  I  strongly  suspect  they  must 
march  off  every  time  there  comes  a  new  set.  I  hope  there 
is  some  other  place  provided  for  them  but  dust.  The  under- 
going so  much  hardship  and  being  deprived  of  the  body  at 
last,  will  make  them  ill-tempered.  I  leave  it  with  your 
physical  genius  to  determine  whether  some  medicinal  ap- 
plications might  not  be  proper  in  such  cases;  and  sub- 
scribe your  proselyte — when  I  can  have  solution  of  these 
matters."  l 

This  discussion  by  two  New  England  boys,  of  a  profound 
and  complex  problem  in  psychology,  is  interesting  as  an 
illustration  of  the  educational  effects  wrought  on  the  peo- 
ple of  New  England,  by  their  rugged  theological  drill. 
They  had  become  a  population  of  acute  philosophers. 
Even  their  children,  it  seems,  were  ready  to  interrupt  the 
delights  of  playing  at  tag  or  of  capturing  woodchucks,  in 
order  to  exchange  arguments  over  the  question  of  the 
materiality  of  the  human  soul.  We  see,  also,  in  the  pres- 
ent example,  some  of  the  chief  peculiarities  of  the  mind  of 
Jonathan  Edwards, — his  keenness  in  analysis,  his  faculty 
of  seeing  the  logical  absurdities  involved  in  a  false  propo- 

1  Works  of  J.  Edwards,  I.  2O-2I. 


JONATHAN  EDWARDS.  i%i 

sition,  his  power  of  setting  forth  these  absurdities  in  a  way 
at  once  fair  and  irresistible,  his  gift  of  raillery,  his  freedom 
from  arrogance  of  tone,  his  use  of  the  Socratic  strategy  of 
a  deferential  manner  in  debate. 

While  still  an  under-graduate,  and  therefore  before  his 
eighteenth  year,  he  began  to  put  into  precise  shape,  in  his 
note-book,  the  conclusions  he  had  come  to  on  leading 
topics  in  mental  philosophy, — such  as  cause,  existence, 
space,  substance,  matter,  thought,  motion,  union  of  mind 
with  body,  consciousness,  memory,  personal  identity,  dura- 
tion, and  so  forth.  In  one  of  these  notes,  on  "  The  Place 
of  Minds,"  he  comes  back  to  that  sharp  study  of  the  nature 
and  physical  relations  of  the  spirit  that  had  employed  his 
mind  some  years  before :  "  Our  common  way  of  conceiv- 
ing of  what  is  spiritual,  is  very  gross,  and  shadowy,  and 
corporeal,  with  dimensions,  and  figure,  and  so  forth.  If 
we  would  get  a  right  notion  of  what  is  spiritual,  we  must 
think  of  thought,  or  inclination,  or  delight.  How  large  is 
that  thing  in  the  mind  which  they  call  thought?  Is  love 
square,  or  round  ?  Is  the  surface  of  hatred  rough,  or 
smooth?  Is  joy  an  inch,  or  a  foot,  in  diameter?  These 
are  spiritual  things ;  and  why  should  we  then  form  such 
a  ridiculous  idea  of  spirits,  as  to  think  them  so  long,  so 
thick,  or  so  wide,  or  to  think  there  is  a  necessity  of  their 
being  square,  or  round,  or  some  other  certain  figure  ? " ! 

In  another  of  these  juvenile  notes,  he  thus  discusses 
"  Nothing  "  :  "  That  there  should  absolutely  be  Nothing  at 
all,  is  utterly  impossible.  The  mind,  let  it  stretch  its  con- 
ceptions ever  so  far,  can  never  so  much  as  bring  itself  to 
conceive  of  a  state  of  perfect  Nothing.  It  puts  the  mind 
into  mere  convulsion  and  confusion,  to  think  of  such  a 
state ;  and  it  contradicts  the  very  nature  of  the  soul,  to 
think  that  such  a  state  should  be.  It  is  the  greatest  of 
contradictions,  and  the  aggregate  of  all  contradictions,  to 
say  that  Thing  should  not  be.  It  is  true,  we  cannot  so 

»  Works  of  J.  Edwards,  I.  678. 


!g2  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITER  A  TURE. 

distinctly  show  the  contradiction  in  words ;  because  we 
cannot  talk  about  it,  without  speaking  stark  nonsense, 
and  contradicting  ourselves  at  every  word ;  and  because 
Nothing  is  that  whereby  we  distinctly  show  other  particu- 
lar contradictions.  ...  If  any  man  thinks  that  he  can 
conceive  well  enough  how  there  should  be  Nothing,  I  will 
engage  that  what  he  means  by  Nothing,  is  as  much  Some- 
thing, as  anything  that  he  ever  thought  of  in  his  life ;  and 
I  believe  that  if  he  knew  what  Nothing  was,  it  would  be 
intuitively  evident  to  him  that  it  could  not  be.  .  .  .  Abso- 
lute Nothing  is  the  aggregate  of  all  the  contradictions  in 
the  world :  a  state,  wherein  there  is  neither  body,  nor 
spirit,  nor  space,  neither  empty  space  nor  full  space,  neither 
little  nor  great,  narrow  nor  broad,  neither  infinite  space 
nor  finite  space,  not  even  a  mathematical  point,  neither 
up  nor  down,  neither  north  nor  south.  .  .  .  When  we  go 
about  to  form  an  idea  of  perfect  Nothing,  we  must  shut 
out  all  these  things  ;  .  .  .  nor  must  we  suffer  our  thoughts 
to  take  sanctuary  in  a  mathematical  point.  When  we  go 
to  expel  being  out  of  our  thoughts,  we  must  be  careful 
not  to  leave  empty  space  in  the  room  of  it ;  and  when  we 
go  to  expel  emptiness  from  our  thoughts,  we  must  not 
think  to  squeeze  it  out  by  anything  close,  hard,  and  solid ; 
but  we  must  think  of  the  same  that  the  sleeping  rocks  do 
dream  of ;  and  not  till  then,  shall  we  get  a  complete  idea 
of  Nothing."  l 

It  is  in  these  wonderful  memoranda,  penned  by  this  lad 
of  sixteen  or  seventeen,  that  we  find  his  first  avowal  of 
that  philosophy  of  Idealism,  with  which  the  name  of  Berke- 
ley has  since  been  associated.  At  the  end  of  an  argument 
respecting  "  Being,"  Jonathan  Edwards  says :  "  What, 
then,  is  to  become  of  the  universe?  Certainly,  it  exists 
nowhere  but  in  the  Divine  mind.  .  .  .  Those  beings  which 
have  knowledge  and  consciousness  are  the  only  proper, 
and  real,  and  substantial  beings ;  inasmuch  as  the  being  of 

1  Works  of  J.  Edwards,  I.  706-707. 


JONATHAN  EDWARDS.  ,83 

other  things  is  only  by  these.  From  hence  we  may  see 
the  gross  mistake  of  those  who  think  material  things  the 
most  substantial  beings,  and  spirits  more  like  a  shadow ; 
whereas  spirits  only  are  properly  substance."  l  In  another 
note,  he  says :  "  The  material  universe  exists  only  in  the 
mind.  .  .  .  All  material  existence  is  only  idea."1 

The  precocity  of  Jonathan  Edwards  in  physical  science, 
appears  to  have  been  not  less  wonderful  than  was  his 
precocity  in  metaphysical  science.  His  father  had  a  cor- 
respondent, probably  in  England,  who  was  much  inter- 
ested in  natural  history;  and  for  this  gentleman,  Jonathan 
Edwards,  when  twelve  years  of  age  or  perhaps  younger, 
wrote  an  elaborate  paper,  giving  with  great  exactness  of 
statement,  and  with  great  force  of  reasoning,  the  results  of 
his  own  observations  upon  spiders.  "  May  it  please  your 
Honor,"  writes  this  modest  and  marvellous  boy,  "  There 


1  Works  of  J.  Edwards,  I.  708. 

*  Ibid.  I.  676.  Some  of  the  sentences  that  I  have  quoted  to  illustrate 
Edwards's  early  avowal  of  Idealism,  are  also  quoted  by  Professor  A.  C. 
Eraser  (Works  of  Berkeley,  IV.  182).  to  illustrate  his  statement  that  "Jona- 
than Edwards,  the  most  subtle  reasoner  that  America  has  produced."  was 
"an  able  defender  of  Berkeley's  great  philosophical  conception  in  its  ap- 
plication to  the  material  world."  On  another  page  (ibid.  190),  Professor 
Eraser  adds,  that  Berkeley's  "  direct  influence  is  now,  however,  hardly  to  be 
found  in  the  history  of  American  thought,  though  his  philosophy  was  pro- 
fessed by  two  of  the  greatest  American  thinkers,  Samuel  Johnson  and  Jona- 
than Edwards."  It  is  certain  that  Johnson  derived  his  Idealism  from  Berke- 
ley, and  in  consequence  of  Berkeley's  visit  to  America  ;  and  the  impression 
likely  to  be  made  by  Professor  Eraser's  words,  is  that  the  same  was  the  case 
with  Edwards.  But  this  is  by  no  means  certain.  The  above  sentences  from 
Edwards,  avowing  Idealism,  were  written  nine  or  ten  years  before  Berkeley 
came  to  America.  Moreover,  Edwards  was  not  the  man  to  conceal  his  intel- 
lectual obligations  ;  and  the  name  of  Berkeley  nowhere  occurs,  so  far  as  I  can 
discover,  in  all  the  ten  volumes  of  Edwards's  printed  writings.  It  seems  more 
probable  that  the  peculiar  opinions  which  Edwards  held  in  common  with 
Berkeley,  were  reached  by  him  through  an  independent  process  of  reasoning 
and  somewhat  in  the  same  way  that  they  were  reached  by  Berkeley,  who,  as 
Professor  Eraser  says  (ibid.  35),  "  proceeded  in  hi*  intellectual  work  on  the 
basis  of  postulates  which  he  partly  borrowed  from  Locke,  and  partly  assumed 
in  antagonism  to  him." 


1 84  HISTORY   OF  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

are  some  things  that  I  have  happily  seen  of  the  wondrous 
way  of  the  working  of  the  spider.  Although  everything 
belonging  to  this  insect  is  admirable,  there  are  some  phe- 
nomena relating  to  them  more  particularly  wonderful. 
Everybody  that  is  used  to  the  country,  knows  their 
marching  in  the  air  from  one  tree  to  another,  sometimes 
at  the  distance  of  five  or  six  rods.  Nor  can  one  go  out  in 
a  dewy  morning,  at  the  latter  end  of  August  and  the 
beginning  of  September,  but  he  shall  see  multitudes  of 
webs,  made  visible  by  the  dew  that  hangs  on  them,  reach- 
ing from  one  tree,  branch,  and  shrub  to  another.  .  .  .  But 
these  webs  may  be  seen  well  enough  in  the  daytime 
by  an  observing  eye,  by  their  reflection  in  the  sunbeams. 
Especially,  late  in  the  afternoon  may  these  webs  that 
are  between  the  eye  and  that  part  of  the  horizon  that 
is  under  the  sun,  be  seen  very  plainly,  being  advantage- 
ously posited  to  reflect  the  rays.  And  the  spiders  them- 
selves may  be  very  often  seen  travelling  in  the  air,  from 
one  stage  to  another  amongst  the  trees,  in  a  very  unac- 
countable manner.  But  I  have  often  seen  that  which  is 
much  more  astonishing.  In  very  calm  and  serene  days  in 
the  forementioned  time  of  year,  standing  at  some  distance 
behind  the  end  of  an  house  or  some  other  opaque  body, 
so  as  just  to  hide  the  disk  of  the  sun  and  keep  off  his  daz- 
zling rays,  and  looking  along  close  by  the  side  of  it,  I 
have  seen  a  vast  multitude  of  little  shining  webs,  and 
glistening  strings,  brightly  reflecting  the  sunbeams,  and 
some  of  them  of  great  length,  and  of  such  a  height  that 
one  would  think  they  were  tacked  to  the  vault  of  the 
heavens,  and  would  be  burnt  like  tow  in  the  sun.  .  .  . 
But  that  which  is  most  astonishing  is,  that  very  often 
appears  at  the  end  of  these  webs,  spiders  sailing  in  the  air 
with  them.  .  .  .  And  since  I  have  seen  these  things,  I 
have  been  very  conversant  with  spiders,  resolving  if  pos- 
sible to  find  out  the  mysteries  of  these  their  astonishing 
works.  And  I  have  been  so  happy  as  very  frequently  to 
see  their  manner  of  working;  that  when  a  spider  would 


JON  A  THAN  ED  WARDS.  1 85 

go  from  one  tree  to  another,  or  would  fly  in  the  air,  he 
first  lets  himself  down  a  little  way  from  the  twig  he  stands 
on  by  a  web ;  .  .  .  and  then  laying  hold  of  it  by  his  fore- 
feet, and  bearing  himself  by  that,  puts  out  a  web  .  .  . 
which  is  drawn  out  of  his  tail  with  infinite  ease,  in  the 
gently  moving  air,  to  what  length  the  spider  pleases ;  and 
if  the  farther  end  happens  to  catch  by  a  shrub  or  the 
branch  of  a  tree,  the  spider  immediately  feels  it,  and  fixes 
the  hither  end  of  it  to  the  web  by  which  he  lets  himself 
down,  and  goes  over  by  that  web  which  he  put  out  of  his 
tail."  He  then  describes  minutely  how  the  spider  moves 
from  tree  to  tree ;  and  how,  in  the  fall  of  the  year,  they 
sustain  themselves  in  the  air  and  are  carried  upon  the 
westerly  winds  to  the  sea,  and  are  "  buried  in  the  ocean, 
and  leave  nothing  behind  them  but  their  eggs  for  a  new 
stock  next  year." ' 

The  interest  of  Jonathan  Edwards  in  physical  science 
did  not  pass  away  with  his  childhood ;  and  while  a  student 
at  Yale  College,  and  especially  while  a  tutor  there,  he  pros- 
ecuted his  physical  researches  with  great  diligence.  He 
even  wrote  a  series  of  notes  on  natural  science,  intended  as 
the  basis  of  a  book.  In  these  notes,  he  dealt  with  the  prin- 
cipal topics  in  physics  and  astronomy,  many  of  his  remarks 
being  very  acute,  ingenious,  and  original.  He  suggested 
that  "there  is  in  the  atmosphere  some  other  ethereal 
matter  considerably  rarer  than  atmospheric  air ; "  that 
water  is  a  compressible  fluid — a  fact  not  publicly  announced 
by  scientific  men  until  thirty  years  afterward ;  that  water 
in  freezing  loses  its  specific  gravity ;  and  that  "  the  exist- 


1  Works  of  J.  Edwards,  I.  23-28.  The  manuscripts  from  which  these  ex- 
traordinary specimens  of  juvenile  thought  and  expression  are  printed,  were  in 
the  possession  of  Sereno  E.  Dwight,  when  editing  the  works  of  Edwards : 
and  are  described  by  him  as  in  "  handwriting  of  the  earliest  and  most 
unformed  cast ; "  the  essay  relative  to  the  materiality  of  the  soul  being 
'without  pointing  or  any  division  into  sentences,"  and  having  " every  ap- 
pearance of  having  been  written  by  a  boy  just  after  he  had  learned  to  write." 
Ibid.  20. 


1 86  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

ence  of  frigorific  particles"  is  doubtful.  In  explaining  the 
phenomena  of  thunder  and  lightning,  without  any  knowl- 
edge of  the  electric  fluid,  and  long  before  the  invention  of 
the  Leyden  jar,  he  rejected  the  notions  then  prevalent  upon 
the  subject,  and  came  nearer  to  the  theory  afterward  dis- 
covered by  Franklin  than  any  other  human  mind  had  then 
done.  He  made  important  suggestions  relative  to  a  theory 
of  atoms ;  he  demonstrated  that  the  fixed  stars  are  suns ; 
he  explained  the  formation  of  river-channels,  the  different 
refrangibility  of  the  rays  of  light,  the  growth  of  trees,  the 
process  of  evaporation,  and  the  philosophy  of  the  lever; 
and  he  made  important  observations  on  sound,  on  elec- 
tricity, on  the  tendency  of  winds  from  the  coast  to  bring 
rain,  and  on  the  cause  of  colors.1 

The  intense  intellectual  discipline  to  which,  almost  from 
infancy,  this  wonderful  person  subjected  himself,  was  ac- 
companied by  a  moral  and  spiritual  discipline,  begun  as 
early  in  life,  and  in  its  rigor  equally  intense.  In  the  "  reso- 
lutions" that  he  wrote  out  for  himself  while  a  very  young 
man,  one  now  finds,  amid  many  tokens  of  the  gratuitous 
and  puerile  severity  of  his  age  and  his  sect,  the  traits  of  a 
personal  character  full  of  all  nobility :  "  To  live  with  all 
my  might  while  I  do  live  ;  "  "  When  I  feel  pain,  to  think 
of  the  pains  of  martyrdom  and  of  hell ; "  "  Never  to  do 
anything  out  of  revenge  ;  "  "  In  narrations,  never  to  speak 
anything  but  the  pure  and  simple  verity;"  "Never  to 
give  over  nor  in  the  least  to  slacken  my  fight  with  my 
corruptions,  however  unsuccessful  I  may  be."  2  On  the 
twenty-third  of  September,  1723,  he  wrote:  "I  observe 
that  old  men  seldom  have  any  advantage  of  new  dis- 
coveries, because  they  are  beside  the  way  of  thinking  to 
which  they  have  been  so  long  used.  Resolved,  if  ever  I 
live  to  years,  that  I  will  be  impartial  to  hear  the  reasons 
of  all  pretended  discoveries,  and  receive  them  if  rational, 
how  long  soever  I  have  been  used  to  another  way  of  think- 

1  Works  of  J.  Edwards,  I.  53-54  ;  702-761.  *  Ibid.  68-72. 


JONATHAN  EDWARDS.  ^7 

ing."  !  About  one  month  afterward,  he  wrote :  "  To  fol- 
low the  example  of  Mr.  B.,  who,  though  he  meets  with 
great  difficulties,  yet  undertakes  them  with  a  smiling  coun- 
tenance, as  though  he  thought  them  but  little  ;  and  speaks 
of  them,  as  if  they  were  very  small."  *  On  the  sixth  of 
June,  1724,  while  a  tutor  at  Yale,  he  wrote  :  "  I  have  now 
abundant  reason  to  be  convinced  of  the  troublesomeness 
and  vexation  of  the  world,  and  that  it  never  will  be  an- 
other kind  of  world,"  * — an  observation  confirmed,  doubt- 
less, by  the  experience  of  many  another  Yale  tutor,  since 
that  date. 

Such,  in  intellectual  attainments  and  in  spiritual  quality, 
was  Jonathan  Edwards,  when,  at  the  age  of  twenty-four, 
he  entered  upon  his  work  as  minister  of  a  parish  on  the 
frontiers  of  civilization.  The  remainder  of  his  life  was 
what  he  expected  it  to  be, — an  experience  of  labor  and  of 
sorrow  ;  but  always  borne  by  him  with  meek  and  cheerful 
submission.  He  had  ill  health,  domestic  griefs,  public 
misrepresentation,  alienation  of  friends,  persecution,  even 
poverty.  In  1751,  he  was  so  poor  that  his  daughters  had 
to  earn  money  for  household  expenses  by  making  fans, 
laces,  and  embroidery ;  and  he  himself,  for  lack  of  paper, 
had  to  do  his  writing,  mostly  on  the  margins  of  pam- 
phlets, on  the  covers  of  letters,  and  on  the  remnants  that 
his  daughters  could  spare  him  from  the  silk-paper  used  by 
them  in  the  manufacture  of  fans. 

Nevertheless,  through  it  all,  he  bated  not  a  jot  of  heart 
or  hope,  but  still  bore  up  and  steered  right  onward.  His 
chief  business  was  in  his  study;  and  there  he  usually 
worked  thirteen  hours  a  day.  Even  out  of  the  study, 
his  mind  was  not  at  rest ;  when,  for  exercise,  he  rode  on 
horseback,  or  walked  in  the  woods,  he  kept  on  at  his 
tasks  of  thought ;  in  order  that  he  might  not  forget  any- 
thing that  he  had  wrought  out  in  these  excursions,  he 
was  accustomed  to  pin  a  bit  of  paper  upon  his  coat,  for 

1  Works  of  J.  Edwards,  I.  94.  «  Ibid   100.  » Ibid.  103. 


j.88  HISTORY  OF  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

every  idea  that  was  to  be  jotted  down  on  his  return ;  and 
it  was  noticed  that,  sometimes,  he  would  come  home  with 
his  coat  covered  over  with  these  fluttering  memorials  of 
his  intellectual  activity. 

The  problems  upon  which  his  mind  was  constantly  at 
work,  were  the  great  problems  of  theology, — especially 
those  in  immediate  debate,  at  that  time,  in  New  England. 
Of  course,  he  held  the  theology  that  was  then  and  there 
orthodox, — that  ganglion  of  heroic,  acute,  and  appalling 
dogmas  commonly  named  after  John  Calvin.  To  the  de- 
fence of  that  theology,  in  all  its  rigors,  in  all  its  horrors, 
Jonathan  Edwards  brought  his  unsurpassed  abilities  as  a 
dialectician. 

We  need  not  discredit  the  traditions  that  have  come 
down  to  us,  of  the  agonizing  effects  produced  upon  men 
and  women,  by  such  an  advocate  as  he,  giving  statement 
to  such  doctrines  as  those.  He  was  not  an  orator.  In  the 
pulpit,  he  generally  held  his  little  "manuscript  volume 
in  his  left  hand,  the  elbow  resting  on  the  cushion  or  the 
Bible,  his  right  hand  rarely  raised  but  to  turn  the  leaves, 
and  his  person  almost  motionless."1  Yet  such  was  the 
power  of  his  sincerity,  of  his  solemnity,  and  of  his  logic, 
that  he  wrought  results  not  surpassed  in  their  kind  even  by 
the  oratory  of  Whitefield.  His  first  sermon  at  Princeton, 
in  the  College  Hall,  was  two  hours  long;  but  it  so  en- 
chained the  audience  that  they  were  astonished  and  dis- 
appointed that  it  closed  so  soon.  One  person,  who  heard 
him  preach  concerning  the  Day  of  Judgment,  testified 
that  "  so  vivid  and  solemn  was  the  impression  made  on 
his  own  mind,  that  he  fully  supposed  that,  as  soon  as 
Mr.  Edwards  should  close  his  discourse,  the  Judge  would 
descend,  and  the  final  separation  take  place."2  Once,  at 
Enfield,  Connecticut,  he  came  into  an  assemblage  that 
was  unusually  listless  and  indifferent ;  but  before  his  ser- 
mon was  ended,  the  people  were  bowed  down  in  agony 

'  S.  E.  Dwight,  Works  of  J.  Edwards,  I.  605-606.  *  Ibid.  604. 


JONATHAN  EDWARDS.  1.89 

and  terror.  "  There  was  such  a  breathing  of  distress  and 
weeping,  that  the  preacher  was  obliged  to  speak  to  the 
people,  and  desire  silence  that  he  might  be  heard."  l 

The  sermon  through  which  he  so  moved  the  people  of 
Enfield,  had  this  terrifying  title,  "  Sinners  in  the  Hands  of 
an  Angry  God ;  "  and  an  analysis  of  his  method  in  that 
discourse,  will  serve  to  show  us  enough  of  his  method  in 
all  his  discourses.  It  is  upon  the  text,  "  Their  feet  shall 
slide  in  due  time."  After  a  concise  and  solemn  exposition 
of  the  original  use  of  the  words,  he  deduces  from  them 
this  proposition  :  "  There  is  nothing  that  keeps  wicked 
men,  at  any  one  moment,  out  of  hell,  but  the  mere  pleas- 
ure of  God."  He  then  proceeds  to  justify  the  proposition 
by  a  series  of  ten  considerations,  each  stated  with  great 
sharpness  and  force,  and  all  accumulating  upon  this  cen- 
tral thought  an  indescribable  emphasis:  I.  There  is  no 
want  of  power  in  God  to  cast  wicked  men  into  hell  at  any 
moment.  2.  They  deserve  to  be  cast  into  hell.  3.  They 
are  already  under  a  sentence  of  condemnation.  4.  They 
are  now  the  objects  of  that  very  same  anger  and  wrath  of 
God,  that  is  expressed  in  the  torments  of  hell.  5.  The 
Devil  stands  ready  to  fall  upon  them  and  seize  them  as 
his  own,  at  what  moment  God  shall  permit  him.  6.  There 
are  in  the  souls  of  wicked  men  those  hellish  principles 
reigning,  that  would  presently  kindle  and  flame  out  into 
hell-fire,  if  it  were  not  for  God's  restraints.  7.  It  is  no 
security  to  wicked  men,  for  one  moment,  that  there  are  no 
visible  means  of  death  at  hand.  8.  Natural  men's  care  to 
preserve  their  own  lives,  or  the  care  of  others  to  preserve 
them,  does  not  secure  them  a  moment.  9.  All  wicked 
men's  pains  and  contrivance  to  escape  hell,  while  they 
continue  to  reject  Christ,  do  not  secure  them  from  hell  one 
moment.  10.  God  has  laid  himself  under  no  obligation, 
by  any  promise,  to  keep  any  natural  man  out  of  hell  one 
moment.2 

1  Works  of  J.  Edwards.  I.  605.  »  Ibid.  VII.  163-168. 


190 


HISTORY   OF  AMERICAN    LITERATURE. 


These  several  considerations  follow,  one  after  another^ 
with  dreadful  swiftness  and  force,  each  hurled  by  calm, 
merciless  logic,  and  by  an  overwhelming  intensity  of  real- 
ism.  He  then  reaches  the  application,  where  the  urgency 
of  reasoning,  of  menace,  of  consternation,  becomes  intol- 
erable. No  wonder  that  human  nature  gave  way  under  it ; 
that  men  and  women  sighed  and  sobbed,  as  the  ghastly 
preacher,  himself  trembling  at  his  own  argument,  went  on 
and  on  with  the  horrible  thing:  "  If  God  should  let  you 
go,  you  would  immediately  sink,  and  sinfully  descend,  and 
plunge  into  the  bottomless  gulf.  .  .  .  Were  it  not  for  the 
sovereign  pleasure  of  God,  the  earth  would  not  bear  you 
one  moment ;  for  you  are  a  burden  to  it ;  the  creation 
groans  with  you  ;  the  creature  is  made  subject  to  the  bond- 
age of  your  corruption  not  willingly ;  the  sun  does  not 
willingly  shine  upon  you  to  give  you  light,  to  serve  sin 
and  Satan  ;  the  earth  does  not  willingly  yield  her  increase 
to  satisfy  your  lusts ;  nor  is  it  willingly  a  stage  for  your 
wickedness  to  be  acted  upon  ;  the  air  does  not  willingly 
serve  you  for  breath  to  maintain  the  flame  of  life  in  your 
vitals,  while  you  spend  your  life  in  the  service  of  God's 
enemies.  .  .  .  And  the  world  would  spew  you  out,  were  it 
not  for  the  sovereign  hand  of  him  who  hath  subjected  it  in 
hope."  l 

His  power  over  the  people  whom  he  addressed,  consisted 
partly  in  his  minuteness  of  imaginative  detail, — bringing 
forward  each  element  in  the  case  one  by  one ;  so  that 
drop  after  drop  of  the  molten  metal,  of  the  scalding  oil, 
fell  steadily  upon  the  same  spot,  till  the  victim  cried  out 
in  shrieks  and  ululations  of  agony :  "  The  bow  of  God's 
wrath  is  bent,  and  the  arrow  made  ready  on  the  string, 
and  justice  bends  the  arrow  at  your  heart,  and  strains  the 
bow,  and  it  is  nothing  but  the  mere  pleasure  of  God,  and 
that  of  an  angry  God,  without  any  promise  or  obligation 
at  all,  that  keeps  the  arrow  one  moment  from  being  drunk 

1  Works  of  J.  Edwards,  VII.  169. 


JONATHAN  EDWARDS.  !9I 

with  your  blood."  *  "  The  God  that  holds  you  over  the  pit 
of  hell,  much  as  one  holds  a  spider  or  some  loathsome 
insect  over  the  fire,  abhors  you,  and  is  dreadfully  provoked ; 
...  he  looks  upon  you  as  worthy  of  nothing  else  but  to 
be  cast  into  the  fire.  .  .  .  You  are  ten  thousand  times 
more  abominable  in  his  eyes,  than  the  most  hateful,  ven- 
omous serpent  is  in  ours."  *  "  You  hang  by  a  slender  thread, 
with  the  flames  of  divine  wrath  flashing  about  it,  and 
ready  every  moment  to  singe  it  and  burn  it  asunder."1 
"  If  you  cry  to  God  to  pity  you,  he  will  be  so  far  from 
pitying  you  in  your  doleful  case,  or  showing  you  the  least 
regard  or  favor,  that  instead  of  that,  he  will  only  tread 
you  under  foot.  And  though  he  will  know  that  you  can- 
not bear  the  weight  of  omnipotence  treading  upon  you. 
yet  he  will  not  regard  that  ;  but  he  will  crush  you  under 
his  feet  without  mercy ;  he  will  crush  out  your  blood,  and 
make  it  fly,  and  it  shall  be  sprinkled  on  his  garments,  so 
as  to  stain  all  his  raiment.  He  will  not  only  hate  you,  but 
he  will  have  you  in  the  utmost  contempt ;  no  place  shall 
be  thought  fit  for  you,  but  under  his  feet  to  be  trodden 
down  as  the  mire  of  the  streets."  * 

In  the  latter  part  of  his  life,  Jonathan  Edwards  chanced 
to  open  and  to  read  so  frivolous  a  book  as  a  novel — "  Sir 
Charles  Grandison."  The  delight  that  he  found  in  that 
work,  led  him  to  analyze  the  sources  of  his  pleasure,  and 
especially  to  consider  the  power  of  mere  style  in  the  ex- 
pression of  thought ;  and  to  say  to  his  son  that  he  regret- 
ted his  own  neglect  of  it.  As  a  theologian,  as  a  metaphy- 
sician, as  the  author  of  "The  Inquiry  into  the  Freedom  of 
the  Will,"  as  the  mighty  defender  of  Calvinism,  as  the 
inspirer  and  the  logical  drill-master  of  innumerable  minds 
in  his  own  country,  and  in  Great  Britain,  he,  of  course,  fills 
a  large  place  in  ecclesiastical  and  philosophical  history. 
But  even  from  the  literary  point  of  view,  and  in  spite  of 
his  own  low  estimate  of  his  literary  merits,  he  deserves 

1  Works  of  J.  Edwards,  VII.  170.  *  Ibid.  170. 

»  Ibid.  171.  *  Ibid.  173. 


I92 


HISTORY  OF  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 


high  rank.  He  had  the  fundamental  virtues  of  a  writer, 
— abundant  thought,  and  the  utmost  precision,  clearness, 
and  simplicity  in  the  utterance  of  it ;  his  pages,  likewise, 
hold  many  examples  of  bold,  original,  and  poetic  imagery ; 
and  though  the  nature  of  his  subjects,  and  the  temper  of 
his  sect,  repressed  the  exercise  of  wit,  he  was  possessed  of 
wit  in  an  extraordinary  degree,  and  of  the  keenest  edge. 
In  early  life,  he  was  sadly  afflicted  by  the  burden  of  check- 
ing the  movements  of  this  terrible  faculty;  but  later,  it 
often  served  him  in  controversy,  not  as  a  substitute  for  ar- 
gument, but  as  its  servant;  enabling  him,  especially  in  the 
climaxes  of  a  discussion,  to  make  palpable  the  absurdity  of 
propositions  that  he  had  already  shown  to  be  untenable.1 

X. 

In  the  year  1776,  shortly  after  the  evacuation  of  Boston 
by  the  British  troops,  a  somewhat  dramatic  scene  was  pre- 
sented one  day,  in  one  of  the  churches  of  that  city,  known 
as  the  Hollis  Street  Church.  Its  patriotic  members,  hav- 
ing returned  from  the  outlying  villages  to  which  they  had 
fled  the  year  before,  had  determined  to  come  to  stern 
issues  with  their  pastor,  the  Reverend  Mather  Byles,  a 
distinguished  and  powerful  divine,  but  an  incorrigible 
Tory,  then  just  seventy  years  old.  All  along,  from  the 
^>pening  of  the  controversy  between  the  colonies  and 
the  king,  he  had  taken  sides  with  the  king  against  the 
colonies.  Although  in  the  pulpit  he  never,  in  those  days, 
referred  to  politics,  out  of  the  pulpit  he  referred  to  little 
else ;  and  he  made  unsparing  use  of  his  acuteness  and  of 
his  sarcastic  wit,  to  baffle  and  scourge  the  political  designs 
of  his  own  people.  During  the  occupation  of  the  city  by 
the  king's  soldiers,  he  had  remained  there,  and  had  given 
them  his  aid  and  comfort ;  and  he  still  affronted  his  con- 
gregation by  praying,  in  their  presence,  for  the  prosperity 
of  the  monarch  whose  troops  had  desolated  the  town,  had 

1  A  notable  instance  of  his  wit  in  logical  ridicule,  is  his  exposure  of  the 
absurdity  of  Chubb's  notion  of  "  an  act."  Wprks  of  J.  Edwards,  II.  199-200. 


MATHER  BYLES, 


193 


slaughtered  their  brethren,  and  were  preparing  to  enslave 
the  whole  country.  For  forty-three  years,  Mather  Byles 
had  ministered  to  that  one  church,  faithfully,  ably,  with 
great  renown  j1  yet  they  could  endure  his  political  perver- 
sity no  longer.  Resting  their  public  accusations  against 
him,  however,  on  his  faults  as  a  pastor,  and  not  on  his 
faults  as  a  patriot,  they  drew  up  their  charges  in  writing, 
and  notified  him  of  their  wish  for  a  public  interview  upon 
the  subject.  On  the  day  appointed,  the  male  members  of 
the  congregation,  with  grim  resolution,  yet  with  no  little 
dread  of  the  awful  eye  and  the  no  less  awful  tongue  of  the 
great  man  who  had  been  their  spiritual  lord  so  long,  as- 
sembled early  at  the  church.  The  pews  had  been  removed 
by  the  troops  from  the  floor  of  the  house ;  and  perhaps 
with  a  mute  sense  of  greater  safety  in  the  approaching 
interview,  the  men  took  their  seats  in  one  of  the  lofty  gal- 
leries, and  there  awaited  in  silence  the  arrival  of  the  mighty 
person,  whose  wrath  they  were  about  to  invoke  upon  them- 
selves. "  In  due  time,"  says  the  son2  of  one  who  witnessed 
the  scene,  "  the  door  opened  slowly,  and  Dr.  Byles  entered 
the  house  with  an  imposing  solemnity  of  manner.  He 
was  dressed  in  his  ample,  flowing  robes  and  bands,. un- 
der a  full  bush-wig  that  had  been  recently  powdered,  sur- 
mounted by  a  large  three-cornered  hat.  He  walked  from 
the  door  to  the  pulpit  with  a  long  and  measured  tread, 
ascended  the  stairs,  hung  his  hat  upon  the  peg,  and  seated 
himself.  After  a  few  moments,  he  turned  with  a  porten- 
tous air  toward  the  gallery,  where  his  accusers  sat,  and 
said, — '  If  ye  have  aught  to  communicate,  say  on.' "  Upon 
this,  one  of  the  deacons,  a  very  little  man  with  a  very  lit- 
tle voice,  stood  up  and  began  to  read :  "  The  church  of 
Christ  in  Hollis  Street  " "  Louder !  "  roared  the  frown- 
ing orator,  with  awful,  leonine  voice.  The  puny  deacon 

1  He  was  born  in  Boston  in  1706,  graduated  at  Harvard  in  1725,  ordained 
pastoi  of  Hollis  Street  church  in  1733. 

•  Samuel  J.  May,  of  Syracuse,  in  W.  B.  Spraguc,  «  Annals  of  Am.  Pulpit," 
I.  380-381. 

VOL.    II. — 13 


194 


HISTORY  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 


began  again,  and  with  still  greater  effort  of  articulate 

squeak :  "  The  church  of  Christ  in  Hollis  Street " 

"  Louder!"  once  more  shouted  the  preacher,  with  terrible 
emphasis.  The  miserable  little  man,  now  trembling  with 
fright  as  well  as  with  great  stress  of  vocal  impotence,  be- 
gan once  more,  and  was  permitted  to  proceed  through 
three  or  four  of  the  specifications,  when  the  insulted  pastor 
arose,  indignation  darkening  all  his  face  and  giving  dread- 
ful resonance  to  his  voice,  and  thundered  out, — "  'Tis  false ; 
'tis  false;  'tis  false;  and  the  church  of  Christ  in  Hollis 
Street  knows  that  'tis  false."  Upon  this,  he  took  down  his 
hat,  put  it  upon  his  head,  and  descending  the  pulpit,  as  an 
angry  monarch  would  his  throne,  he  stalked  proudly  out 
of  the  church,  never  to  enter  it  again  ;  leaving  to  the  little 
deacon  and  his  brethren,  the  contemptuous  privilege  of 
making  the  most  of  their  specifications  against  him. 

Thus,  in  great  bitterness  of  popular  aversion,  ended  the 
public  career  of  a  man,  who,  until  his  loyalty  to  his  king 
made  him  disloyal  to  his  country,  had  held  a  very  high 
place  in  the  admiration  of  his  contemporaries.  To  them 
he  had  seemed  a  man  of  extraordinary  brilliance,  in  many 
different  characters, — wit,  poet,  man  of  letters,  theologian, 
pulpit-orator ;  but  it  was  as  pulpit-orator  only  that  he  was 
really  great,  to  the  service  of  that  single  character  sub- 
ordinating whatever  gifts  he  possessed  for  all  the  others. 

The  traditions  of  his  wit  have,  since  then,  choked  out 
nearly  all  memory  of  the  central  gravity  and  strength  of 
his  character  ;  and  he  stands  in  our  history  merely  as  a 
Tory  punster  and  a  clerical  buffoon.  His  jocoseness,  after 
all,  was  not  the  principal  part  of  him.  He  jested  much ; 
and  yet  he  was  much  more  than  a  jester ;  he  was  an  ear- 
nest and  devout  Christian  minister.1 

His  great  strength  was  in  the  pulpit.     He  was  perhaps 

1  A  collection  of  the  jests  of  Mather  Byles  may  be  made  from  the  follow- 
ing sources:  William  Tudor,  "Life  of  James  Otis,"  156-160;  "The  Bel- 
knap  Papers,"  in  5  Mass.  Hist.  Soc.  Coll.  II.  285,  471  ;  III.  51,  234;  W.  B 
Sprague,  "  Annals  of  Am.  Pulpit,"  I.  377,  378,  382. 


MATHER  BYLES. 


195 


as  great  a  master  of  the  amenities  and  the  potencies  of 
pious  persuasion  as  New  England  had  in  its  colonial  age, 
after  the  days  of  Hooker,  Shepard,  John  Cotton,  and  Urian 
Oakes.  His  presence  was  stately  and  commanding;  he  was 
at  once  aristocrat  and  apostle  ;  in  dress  and  manner,  one  of 
the  first  gentlemen  of  his  time.  Very  early  in  life,  he  had 
shown  a  propensity  to  purely  literary  work ;  he  was  in 
correspondence  with  some  of  the  chiefs  of  literature  in 
England ;  Pope  sent  to  him  a  splendid  copy  of  his  trans- 
lation of  the  Odyssey.  His  own  literary  facility  was  nota- 
ble :  he  had  poetic  sensitiveness,  an  ear  for  the  strokes 
and  cadences  of  the  Popean  verse  ;  no  inconsiderable  fa- 
cility in  the  manufacture  of  that  verse;  all  of  which, 
without  making  him  more  than  a  minor  poet,  gave  him 
uncommon  skill  in  the  modulation  of  his  prose  sentences 
for  oratory.  His  sermons  are  invariably  marked  by  neat- 
ness of  phrase,  and  expertness  in  the  manipulation  of  his 
materials;  by  fresh  and  striking  views  of  things,  by  the 
avoidance  of  uncomfortable  length,  by  courtesy  of  tone, 
by  common  sense.  He  had  paid  much  attention  to  the 
aesthetics  of  his  profession.  His  own  idea  of  "a  finished 
minister  "  included  all  the  accomplishments,  both  of  so- 
ciety and  of  books.  The  preacher,  he  said,  should  be  a 
person  of  "graceful  deportment,  elegant  address,  and 
fluent  utterance.  He  must  study  an  easy  style,  expressive 
diction,  and  tuneful  cadences.  .  .  .  Nothing  can  be  more 
finished  oratory  than  many  of  Paul's  sermons.  .  .  .  Rat- 
tling periods,  uncouth  jargon,  affected  phrases,  and  finical 
jingles — let  them  be  condemned  ;  let  them  be  hissed  from 
the  desk  and  blotted  from  the  page."  '  The  old  Puritan 
traditions  of  the  enormous  studiousness  of  the  preacher, 
were  sanctioned  by  this  preacher — at  least  in  the  imparta- 
tion  of  advice  to  others :  "  The  study  of  the  minister  is 
the  field  of  battle.  Here  he  plays  the  hero,  tries  the  dan- 
gers of  war,  and  repeats  the  toils  of  combat.  ...  How 

1  Sermon  at  the  ordination  of  his  son,  New  London,  1758,  IT-IZ 


196 


HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 


often  must  he  watch  when  others  sleep ;  and  his  solitary 
candle  burn  when  the  midnight  darkness  covers  the  win- 
dows of  the  neighborhood."  l  He  deemed  it  worth  his 
while,  also,  to  accentuate  the  rather  obvious  ethical  re- 
quirements of  the  sacred  calling :  "What  an  inconsistent 
thing  is  a  wicked  minister !  An  unholy  divine ;  a  blind 
watchman  ;  a  wolfish  shepherd  ;  an  ignorant  angel ; — what 
nonsense  is  this !  An  ungodly  man  of  God — what  a  sole- 
cism !  what  a  monster  !  "  2 

The  distinctive  gift  of  Mather  Byles  was  homiletical ; 
he  originated  no  ideas,  he  constructed  no  new  arrangement 
of  ideas  ;  his  function  lay  in  the  strength,  warmth,  and 
vivacity  with  which  he  grasped  for  himself  the  great  fa- 
miliar propositions  in  faith  and  conduct,  and  then,  for 
others,  held  them  forth  in  a  succession  of  splendid  and 
powerful  pictures  that  inevitably  drew  the  eyes  of  men, 
and  stirred  their  hearts  into  fellowship  of  fervor.  He 
smote  men  with  the  sword  of  their  own  accepted  ideas ; 
into  speech  he  put  without  reserve  his  imagination  and  his 
emotion  ;  he  loved  those  generic  and  universal  topics — 
ancient  but  never  old — which  exercised  his  own  uncom- 
mon faculty  of  sublime  and  tender  description  :  the  impo- 
tence of  man,  the  insignificance  of  this  world,  the  grandeur 
of  the  eternal  state,  the  dissonance  and  emptiness  that  are 
in  all  things  whatsoever  save  virtue  and  truth  and  God. 
Repeating  that  melancholy,  tired  text, — the  very  hyperbole 
and  half-truth  of  mortal  weariness  and  pain, — "  Verily 
every  man  at  his  best  estate  is  altogether  vanity,"  the 
preacher,  in  one  sermon,8  interprets  it  in  dramatic  collo- 
quy with  an  imaginary  disputant,  and  charges  each  word 
of  his  text  with  an  explicit  burden  of  gloom.  At  an- 
other time,  he  draws  this  picture  of  the  physical  future  of 
his  hearers :  "  In  a  few  years  the  most  beauteous  and 
learned  and  pious  head  will  grin  a  hideous  skull.  Our 


1  Sermon  at  the  ordination  of  his  son,  New  London,  1758,  14. 

*  Ibid.  8.  3  Funeral  Sermon  on  Win.  Dummer,  3-4. 


MATHER  BYLES.  I97 

broken  coffins  will  show  nothing  but  black  bones,  or  black 
mould,  and  worms,  and  filth."  *  He  pours  scorn  on  the 
emptiness  of  all  human  pretension :  "  A  creature  droop- 
ing to  dust,  and  falling  into  a  filthy  grave,  to  set  up  for 
strength  and  beauty,  honor  and  applause !  Was  ever  any- 
thing more  absurd  and  ridiculous?  So  might  an  emmet 
crawl  in  state,  and  value  itself  upon  its  imaginary  posses- 
sions, and  conceited  accomplishments.  So  might  a  shadow, 
lengthened  by  the  setting  sun,  admire  to  find  itself  grown 
so  tall,  while  in  the  same  moment  it  was  going  to  vanish, 
blended  in  the  gathering  twilight,  and  lost  in  night  and 
darkness."  l 

The  Bible  is  the  storehouse  for  this  preacher's  themes, 
and  for  much  of  his  imagery ;  and  his  gift  of  description, 
as  it  exercises  itself  on  man's  pettiness,  so  is  it  put  forth 
for  the  display  of  God's  greatness.  Taking  up  one  of  the 
Scriptural  titles  of  God,  "  the  Lord  of  hosts,"  the  orator 
proceeds  to  this  amplification  of  it :  "  This  is  one  of  the 
magnificent  and  favorite  titles  which  he  wears ;  and  it  is 
about  two  hundred  times  applied  to  him  in  the  inspired 
writings.  The  Lord  of  hosts,  he  is  the  King  of  glory  :  the 
Lord  of  hosts  is  his  name.  Take  a  view  of  his  extended 
and  potent  armies,  and  see  him  in  his  glory  at  the  head  of 
all.  The  heavenly  hosts  are  his.  So  are  the  angels  in  all 
their  shining  forms  and  unnumbered  regiments.  An  im- 
measurable front,  and  an  endless  rear!  No  army  of  so 
exact  discipline,  such  invincible  courage  and  fatal  execu- 
tion. Our  painted  troops  are  a  mere  mock-show,  to  these 
resistless  legions.  Our  chariots  and  horses  make  no  figure 
at  all  before  these  chariots  of  fire  and  horses  of  fire.  The 
chariots  of  God  are  twenty  thousand  thousands  of  angels ; 
and  he  maketh  his  angels  spirits  and  his  ministers  a  flame 
of  fire.  A  whole  host  of  our  mortal  warriors  shall  wither 
in  a  night  before  one  of  them,  and  strew  the  pale  camp 
with  an  hundred  and  four  score  and  five  thousand  corpses. 

1  "The  Present  Vileness  of  the  Body,"  9. 
•  Funeral  Sermon  on  Wm.  Dummer,  20-21. 


198  HISTORY  OF  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

Beneath  these,  the  stars  keep  their  military  watch,  the  out- 
guards  of  the  celestial  army.  And  what  a  glittering  host 
of  them  range  themselves  over  the  blue  plains  of  ether! 
.  .  .  These  in  all  their  immense  dominions  are  under  his 
absolute  command.  .  .  .  How  mysterious  and  unknown 
are  the  laws  of  those  unnumbered  squadrons  ;  and  how 
irresistible  their  movements !  Canst  thou  bind  the  sweet 
influences  of  Pleiades,  or  loose  the  bands  of  Orion  ?  Canst 
thou  bring  forth  Mazzaroth  in  his  season,  or  canst  thou 
guide  Arcturus  with  his  sons?  But  he,  the  great  mon- 
arch of  all,  commands  with  infinite  ease  ;  and  every  roll- 
ing world  submits  with  exact  obedience.  .  .  .  Below  these, 
and  sailing  along  our  atmosphere,  the  clouds  make  their 
majestic  appearance,  a  flying  camp,  or  a  moving  magazine 
of  divine  artillery.  .  .  .  There  the  northern  tempests  plant 
their  impetuous  batteries  ;  there  the  fierce  engines  of  the 
sky  play  in  various  forms  of  destruction.  He  is  alike  the 
Lord  of  the  terrestrial  hosts,  while  every  species  of  crea- 
ture and  every  individual  are  under  his  exact  command. 
But  who  can  call  over  the  list  of  these  extended  cohorts? 
Is  there  any  number  of  his  armies?  The  earth  is  full 
of  his  legions  ;  so  also  is  the  great  and  wide  sea,  with  all 
the  tribes  and  colonies  there.  .  .  .  And  where's  the  crea- 
ture which  he  cannot  commission,  or  that  dares  to  mutiny 
against  his  sovereign  edicts?  .  .  .  Behold  what  a  Lord  of 
hosts  is  here!  Even  the  wind  and  the  seas  obey  him! 

He  rules 

'  amidst  the  war  of  elements, 
The  wrecks  of  matter,  and  the  crush  of  worlds.' 

Even  the  devils  are  subject  to  him.  ...  He  is  the  Lord  of 
our  hosts ;  and  not  an  army  gathers  in  this  earth  without 
his  counsels  and  providence.  ...  He  unfurls  his  ensigns, 
and  calls  for  the  march  of  nations  in  universal  tumult,  and 
ranges  half  the  globe  on  a  side,  confederated  to  a  decisive 
battle."1 

1  Artillery-sermon  for  1740,  9-14. 


CHARLES  CHAUNCEY. 


XI. 

On  the  border-line,  between  the  colonial  age  and  the  age 
of  the  Revolution,  we  confront  two  great  men,  Jonathan 
Mayhew  and  Charles  Chauncey,  who  belong  to  both  ages, 
and  who  represent,  not  only  the  vast  political  influence 
of  the  New  England  clergy  in  the  agitations  of  those 
times,  but  the  broadest  intellectual  training,  the  most  ra- 
tional and  the  most  catholic  sentiment,  then  reached  by 
any  of  their  class.  These  two  men  we  shall  meet  again, 
and  study  more  fully,  when  we  come  to  the  literature 
of  the  Revolution ;  but  our  record  of  the  high  and  splen- 
did intellectual  development  of  the  clergy  of  New  Eng- 
land, during  the  colonial  time,  would  lack  some  essential 
factors,  if  we  did  not  at  least  point  to  their  names  and 
to  the  significance  of  their  lives,  even  in  the  period  now 
under  view. 

Jonathan  Mayhew,  the  younger  of  the  two,  who  also 
died  first,  was  for  the  last  nineteen  years  of  his  short  life, 
minister  of  a  church  in  Boston.  He  was,  in  the  pulpit, 
a  sort  of  tribune  of  the  people.  He  impressed  himself 
upon  his  contemporaries  as  a  thinker  of  much  originality 
and  boldness,  as  a  preacher  of  extraordinary  power,  as  a 
writer  of  great  elegance,  force,  and  wit.  In  the  history  of 
his  time,  he  stands  for  two  things :  first,  the  impulse  he 
gave  to  bold  and  manly  political  conduct  among  his  fel- 
low-countrymen ;  and  second,  the  impulse  he  gave  to  the 
emancipation  of  their  minds  from  the  despotism  of  the  old 
theological  dogmas.  John  Adams,  who  knew  him  well, 
predicted  that  the  writings  of  Jonathan  Mayhew  would 
preserve  his  reputation  "  as  long  as  New  England  shall  be 
free,  integrity  esteemed,  or  wit,  spirit,  humor,  reason,  and 
knowledge  admired."1 

In  a  long  life,  which  began  almost  with  the  beginning  of 
the  eighteenth  century,  and  did  not  end  until  the  stress 

1  Works  of  J.  Adams,  IV.  29. 


2QO  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

and  peril  of  the  American  Revolution  were  all  passed, 
Charles  Chauncey,1  pastor  of  the  first  church  of  Boston, 
lived  among  men  as  their  natural  leader.  He  was  a  man 
of  leonine  heart,  of  strong,  cool  brain,  of  uncommon  moral 
strength.  He  bore  a  great  part  in  the  intellectual  strife  of 
the  Revolution  ;  but  before  that  strife  was  opened,  he  had 
moulded  deeply  the  thought  of  his  time,  both  by  his  living 
speech  and  by  his  publications.  These  were  mostly  ser- 
mons ;  but  as  sermons  they  had  an  extraordinary  sweep  of 
topics,  from  early  piety  and  the  lessons  of  affliction,  to  earth- 
quakes in  Spain,  murder,  religious  compulsion,  Presbyte- 
rian ordination,  legislative  knavery,  the  encouragement  of 
industry,  and  the  capture  of  Cape  Breton. 

The  prevailing  trait  of  the  man  was  intellectual  genuine- 
ness in  all  things,  and  utter  scorn  of  its  opposite  in  anything. 
He  had  a  massive,  logical,  remorseless  understanding,  hardy 
in  its  processes,  and  unwilling  to  take  either  fact  or  opinion 
at  second  hand.  On  the  great  themes  that  were  then  in 
debate  among  men,  he  put  himself  to  enormous  research. 
One  of  these  themes  was  the  Episcopacy.  He  gave  four 
years  of  hard  reading  to  it,  first  in  the  Scriptures  and  in 
the  Fathers,  then  in  all  modern  books  on  both  sides  of  the 
controversy.  Other  themes  were  the  doctrines  of  human 
depravity,  retribution,  and  the  like.  He  settled  himself 
down  for  seven  years  to  the  study  of  these  doctrines  in  the 
New  Testament,  especially  in  the  epistles  of  St.  Paul,  and 
finally  in  all  other  books  within  reach ;  and  he  thus  worked 
his  way  "  into  an  entirely  new  set  of  thoughts  " 2  on  those 
matters.  He  was  an  orthodox  rationalist ;  and  he  stood 
in  the  line  of  that  intellectual  development  among  the 
clergy  of  New  England,  which  at  a  later  day  culminated  in 
Unitarianism. 

In  the  midst  of  the  popular  spasms  and  rhapsodies 
excited  by  the  preaching  of  Whitefield  and  his  imitators, 

1  Born  in  Boston  1705,  graduated  at  Harvard  1721,  pastor  in  Boston  from 
1727  to  his  death  in  1787. 
*  "  Chauncey  Memorials,"  70. 


CHARLES  CHAUNCEY.  2OI 

the  peculiar  qualities  of  Charles  Chauncey  were  strongly 
revealed.  He  had  an  ineffable  contempt  for  all  slipshod, 
giddy,  gaseous  minds ;  for  ejaculatory  and  rhetorical  folk ; 
for  that  oratory  which  makes  up  for  absence  of  ideas  by 
vehemence  of  assertion.  Whitcfield  himself,  he  regarded 
as  a  clerical  mountebank,  ignorant,  shallow,  presumptuous, 
injurious,  •'  never  so  well  pleased  as  with  the  hosannas  of 
ministers  and  parishioners  in  these  parts  of  the  earth;"1 
"  the  grand  promoter  of  all  the  confusion  there  has  been 
in  the  land."*  To  Chauncey  it  seemed  that  the  people 
were  being  led  by  Whitefield  and  his  kind  into  all  manner 
of  disorder  and  folly ;  that  inevitable  reaction  would  come, 
by  and  by,  in  every  shape  of  moral  disaster;  and  that  it 
was  the  duty  of  every  sound  brain  to  help  to  check  the 
epidemic  of  lunacy.  With  his  usual  thoroughness  he  first 
undertook  to  gather  the  facts;  he  travelled  hundreds  of 
miles  to  observe  for  himself  the  proceedings  of  the  itiner- 
ants and  of  the  people  who  were  affected  by  them ;  and 
being  convinced  that  the  fruits  were  delusion,  anarchy, 
self-righteousness,  and  all  uncharitableness,  he  published, 
in  1742,  a  tremendous  sermon  entitled  "  Enthusiasm,"  and 
in  the  following  year,  a  still  more  powerful  treatise,  enti- 
tled, "  Seasonable  Thoughts  on  the  State  of  Religion  in 
New  England." 

A  remarkable  passage  in  the  former  of  these  works,  is 
his  description  of  the  enthusiast ;  a  full-length  portrait  for 
all  ages  and  all  lands.  The  original  being  just  then  very 
conspicuous  in  the  streets  of  Boston,  the  fidelity  of  this 
portrait  must  have  rendered  it  extremely  effective  at  that 
time :  "  The  enthusiast  is  one  who  has  a  conceit  of  himself 
as  a  person  favored  with  the  extraordinary  presence  of  the 
Deity.  He  mistakes  the  workings  of  his  own  passions  for 
divine  communications ;  and  fancies  himself  immediately  in- 
spired by  the  Spirit  of  God,  when  all  the  while  he  is  under 
no  other  influence  than  that  of  an  over-heated  imagination. 

1  "  Chauncey  Memorials,"  65.  '  Ibid.  68. 


2O2  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

"  The  cause  of  this  enthusiasm  is  a  bad  temperament  of 
the  blood  and  spirits.  Tis  properly  a  disease,  a  sort  of 
madness.  .  .  .  None  are  so  much  in  danger  of  it,  as  those 
in  whom  melancholy  is  the  prevailing  ingredient  in  their 
constitution.  In  these  it  often  reigns,  and  sometimes  to 
so  great  a  degree,  that  they  are  really  beside  themselves, 
acting  as  truly  by  the  blind  impetus  of  a  wild  fancy,  as 
though  they  had  neither  reason  nor  understanding. 

"  And  various  are  the  ways  in  which  their  enthusiasm 
discovers  itself.  Sometimes,  it  may  be  seen  in  their  coun- 
tenance. A  certain  wildness  is  discernible  in  their  general 
look  and  air.  .  .  .  Sometimes,  it  strangely  loosens  their 
tongues  and  gives  them  such  an  energy,  as  well  as  fluency 
and  volubility  in  speaking,  as  they  themselves,  by  their 
utmost  efforts,  cannot  so  much  as  imitate  when  they  are 
not  under  the  enthusiastic  influence.  Sometimes,  it  affects 
their  bodies,  throws  them  into  convulsions  and  distortions, 
into  quakings  and  tremblings.  .  .  .  Sometimes,  it  will  un- 
accountably mix  itself  with  their  conduct,  and  give  it  such 
a  tincture  of  that  which  is  freakish  and  furious,  as  none 
can  have  an  idea  of,  but  those  who  have  seen  the  behavior 
of  a  person  in  a  frenzy.  Sometimes,  it  appears  in  their 
imaginary  peculiar  intimacy  with  heaven.  They  are,  in 
their  own  opinion,  the  special  favorites  of  God ;  have  more 
familiar  converse  with  him  than  other  good  men  ;  and  re- 
ceive immediate,  extraordinary  communications  from  him. 
.  .  .  And  what  extravagances,  in  this  temper  of  mind,  are 
they  not  capable  of,  and  under  the  specious  pretext  too  of 
paying  obedience  to  the  authority  of  God  ?  Many  have 
fancied  themselves  acting  by  immediate  warrant  from 
heaven,  while  they  have  been  committing  the  most  un- 
doubted wickedness.  There  is,  indeed,  scarce  anything  so 
wild,  either  in  speculation  or  practice,  but  they  have  given 
in  to  it ;  they  have,  in  many  instances,  been  blasphemers  of 
God  and  open  disturbers  of  the  peace  of  the  world.  But  in 
nothing  does  the  enthusiasm  of  these  persons  discover  itself 
more,  than  in  the  disregard  they  express  to  the  dictates  of 


CHARLES  CHAUNCEY.  203 


reason.  They  are  above  the  force  of  argument,  beyond 
conviction  from  a  calm  and  sober  address  to  their  under- 
standings. As  for  them,  they  are  distinguished  persons ; 
God  himself  speaks  inwardly  and  immediately  to  their 
souls.  .  .  .  And  in  vain  will  you  endeavor  to  convince 
such  persons  of  any  mistakes  they  are  fallen  into.  They 
are  certainly  in  the  right,  and  know  themselves  to  be  so. 
.  .  .  They  are  not,  therefore,  capable  of  being  argued 
with  ;  you  had  as  good  reason  with  the  wind.  And  as  the 
natural  consequence  of  their  being  thus  sure  of  everything, 
they  are  not  only  infinitely  stiff  and  tenacious,  but  impa- 
tient of  contradiction,  censorious,  and  uncharitable.  .  .  . 
Those  .  .  .  who  venture  to  debate  with  them  about  their 
errors  and  mistakes,  their  weaknesses  and  indiscretions, 
run  the  hazard  of  being  stigmatized  by  them  as  poor,  un- 
converted wretches,  without  the  Spirit,  under  the  govern- 
ment of  carnal  reason,  enemies  to  God  and  religion,  and 
in  the  broad  way  to  hell.  .  .  .  The  extraordinary  fervor 
of  their  minds,  accompanied  with  uncommon  bodily  mo- 
tions, and  an  excessive  confidence  and  assurance,  gains 
them  great  reputation  among  the  populace ;  who  speak  of 
them  as  men  of  God,  in  distinction  from  all  others,  and  too 
commonly  hearken  to  and  revere  their  dictates,  as  though 
they  really  were,  as  they  pretend,  immediately  commu- 
nicated to  them  from  the  Divine  Spirit."  l 

1  The  sermon,  3-6. 


CHAPTER  XVI. 

LITERATURE   IN  THE   MIDDLE  COLONIES. 

i.  NEW  YORK  AND  NEW  JERSEY. 

I. — Traits  of  life  in  New  York  before  it  became  English — After  it  became 
English — A  many-tongued  community — Metropolitan  indications — Edu- 
cation neglected — Literary  effort  only  in  spasms. 

II. — Daniel  Denton,  a  pioneer  of  American  Literature  there — His  "  Brief 
Description  of  New  York  " — His  pictures  of  nature  and  of  social  felicity — 
Thomas  Budd,  of  New  Jersey,  another  pioneer  writer — His  "  Good  Order 
established  in  Pennsylvania  and  New  Jersey  " — William  Leeds,  a  refugee 
from  Philadelphia — His  "  News  of  a  Trumpet  sounding  in  the  Wilderness." 

III. — Lewis  Morris  of  Morrisania — His  vivacious  boyhood — Turns  vagabond 
— Settlement  into  steady  courses — A  powerful  politician — His  literary  in- 
clinations— His  letters  from  London — Provincial  loyalty  disenchanted  by 
going  to  the  metropolis. 

N.IV. — Cadwallader  Golden — His  long  career — Manifold  activity — Extraordi- 
nary range  of  his  studies  and  of  his  writings — His  "  History  of  the  Five 
Indian  Nations" — Its  characteristics — Its  descriptions  of  the  savage 
virtues. 

V. — Daniel  Coxe  of  New  Jersey — His  "  Description  of  the  English  Province 
of  Carolana  " — His  statesmanly  view  of  colonial  affairs — Anticipates  Frank- 
lin's plan  of  a  union  of  the  colonies. 

VI. — Jonathan  Dickinson,  pulpit-orator,  physician,  teacher,  author — First 
president  of  the  College  of  New  Jersey — His  personal  traits — His  eminence 
as  a  theological  debater — His  "  Familiar  Letters." 

VII. — William  Livingston — His  "  Philosophic  Solitude  " — Manner  and  spirit 
of  the  poem — Antithesis  between  his  ideal  life  and  his  real  one — His 
strong  character — Outward  engagements — His  activity  as  a  pamphleteer 
and  as  a  writer  in  the  journals — His  burlesque  definition  of  his  own  creed 
— His  "  Review  of  the  Military  Operations  in  North  America  "—His 
"  Verses  to  Eliza." 

VIII.— William  Smith— The  course  of  his  life — His  special  interest  in  the 
history  of  his  native  province — His  "  History  of  New  York  " — Criticisms 
upon  it — Samuel  Smith  and  his  "  History  of  the  Colony  of  Nova  Caesarea 
or  New  Jersey." 

2.  PENNSYLVANIA. 

I.— The  founders  of  Pennsylvania — The  high  motives  of  their  work— Their 
social  severity  —  Intellectual  greatness  of  William  Penn  —  Justice  and 

204 


NE  W    YORK  AND  NE  W  JERSE  Y.  20$ 

liberality  imparted  by  him  to  the  constitution  of  his  province — Education 
provided  for — First  impulses  to  literary  production  in  Pennsylvania — The 
development  of  a  literary  spirit  in  Philadelphia. 

II. — Gabriel  Thomas — A  brisk  Quaker— His  "  Account "  of  Pennsylvania 
and  of  West  New  Jersey — His  enthusiasm  for  his  province — Its  freedom 
from  lawyers  and  doctors — Its  proffer  of  relief  to  the  distressed  in  the  old 
world — Richard  Frame — His  "Short  Description  of  Pennsylvania" — 
John  Holme — His  "  True  Relation  of  the  Flourishing  State  of  Pennsyl- 
vania"—  Jonathan  Dickenson  —  "God's  Protecting  Providence  Man's 
Surest  Help." 

III. — James  Logan — Penn  invites  him  to  America  and  trusts  to  him  his 
affairs  there — His  fidelity  to  the  Penns  and  to  the  people — Difficulties  of 
his  position— His  great  intellectual  attainments — His  writings  published 
and  unpublished. 

IV.— William  Smith— His  influence  upon  intellectual  culture  in  the  middle 
colonies— Arrival  at  New  York — His  "General  Idea  of  the  College  of 
Mirania" — Is  invited  to  Philadelphia — His  useful  career  as  educator, 
preacher,  and  writer. 

V. — A  succession  of  small  writers — Jacob  Taylor — Henry  Brooke — Samuel 
Keimer — Aquila  Rose — James  Ralph— George  Webb  and  his  "  Bachelors' 
Hall" — Joseph  Breintnal — A  poem  from  "  Titan's  Almanac"  for  1730— 
Joseph  Shippen — John  Webbe — Lewis  Evans. 

VI. — Samuel  Davies — Born  and  educated  in  Pennsylvania — Acquires  in  Vir- 
ginia great  fame  as  a  pulpit-orator — His  mission  to  England — Becomes 
president  of  the  College  of  New  Jersey — His  death— Great  popularity  of 
his  published  sermons  down  to  the  present  time— His  traits  as  a  preacher 
—Passage  from  his  sermon  on  "  The  General  Resurrection." 

VII. — Thomas  Godfrey,  the  poet — Connection  of  his  father's  family  with 
Franklin — His  early  life  and  death — Publication  of  his  "Juvenile  Poems" 
His  "  Prince  of  Parthia,"  the  first  American  drama — A  study  of  it. 

VIII. — Benjamin  Franklin,  the  first  man  of  letters  in  America  to  achieve 
cosmopolitan  fame — His  writings  during  our  present  period — His  great 
career  during  the  subsequent  period. 


L  NEW  YORK  AND  NEW  JERSEY. 
I. 

NEAR  the  middle  of  the  year  1664,  the  Dutch  town  of 
New  Amsterdam  was  suddenly  transformed  into  the  Eng- 
lish town  of  New  York, — being  then  just  forty-one  years 
old,  and  having  a  population  of  fifteen  hundred  souls. 
The  whole  province,  of  course,  shared  the  new  name  and 
the  new  mastership  that  had  overtaken  its  chief  town. 


206  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

The  Dutch,  who  founded  both  town  and  province,  had 
thriven  there  from  the  beginning,  according  to  the  habit 
of  their  race, — a  patient,  devout,  labor-loving,  wealth-get- 
ting, stolid  community.  Though  popular  education  was 
neglected,  and  intellectual  life  ran  sluggish  and  dull,  there 
were  among  them  many  men  of  strong  brains  and  scholarly 
attainments : '  Van  der  Donck,  Megapolensis,  and  De  Vries, 
who  wrote  history ;  Stuyvesant,  Beeckman,  and  Van  Rens- 
selaer,  whose  letters  show  considerable  learning;  Van 
Dincklagen,  and  Van  Schelluyne,  who  were  wise  in  the  law ; 
Jacob  Steendam,  Henricus  Selyns,  and  Nicasius  De  Sille, 
who  wrote  poetry;2  and  besides  these,  several  theologians 
and  physicians  who  were  well-read  in  their  own  sciences. 

Though  the  prevailing  race  in  New  Amsterdam  was 
Dutch,  from  an  early  day  the  town  had  been  an  attractive 
one  to  men  of  other  races.  Twenty-one  years  before  it 
fell  into  the  hands  of  the  English,  it  had,  within  it  and 
near  it,  a  population  speaking  eighteen  different  languages.8 
After  it  fell  into  the  hands  of  the  English,  its  attractive- 
ness to  men  of  many  languages  certainly  did  not  diminish ; 
and  it  became,  what  its  best  historian  calls  it,  "  the  most 
polygenous  of  all  the  British  dependencies  in  North  Amer- 
ica. "  *  In  the  first  twenty-four  years  of  its  existence 
under  English  sway,  its  population  was  nearly  quadrupled ; 
and  by  the  end  of  the  colonial  time,  it  had  increased  almost 
twenty-fold.  A  community  of  many  tongues,  of  many  cus- 
toms, of  many  faiths, — there  was,  doubtless,  in  that  fact  a 
prophecy  of  metropolitan  largeness  and  generosity,  in  store 
for  it  somewhere  in  the  future. 

Nevertheless,  we  shall  greatly  err  if  we  imagine  that, 
during  the  larger  part  of  the  colonial  time,  New  York  was 
much  more  than  a  prosperous  and  drowsy  Dutch  village, 

1  J.  R.  Brodhead,  "  Hist.  N.  Y."  I.  748. 

*  "Anthology  of  New  Netherland  ;  or,  Translations  from  the  early  Dutch 
poets  of  New  York,  with  memoirs  of  their  lives,"  by  Henry  C.  Murphy. 
New  York,  1865. 

1  J.  R.  Brodhead,  "  Hist.  N.  Y."  I.  374.  « Ibid.  II.  38?- 


DANIEL  DENTON. 


207 


perplexed  by  polyglot  interference  and  the  menace  of  in- 
tellectual illumination ;  the  scene  of  a  petty  life ;  ravaged 
by  sectarian  and  provincial  bigotries,  and  by  vulgar  com- 
petitions in  society  and  in  politics;  very  slowly  moving 
toward  the  discovery  that,  in  all  the  world,  there  is  any 
other  pursuit  so  noble  as  the  pursuit  of  wealth.  The  his- 
torian, William  Smith,  writing  in  1757,  mentions  that,  for 
a  long  time,  his  own  father  and  James  De  Lancey  "were 
the  only  academics  "  in  the  province ;  and  that,  as  late  as 
1745,  there  were  only  thirteen  more.1  "What  a  contrast," 
he  exclaims,  "  in  everything  respecting  the  cultivation  of 
science,  between  this  and  the  colonies  first  settled  by  the 
English ! "  *  "  Our  schools  are  of  the  lowest  order — the  in- 
structors want  instruction ;  and  through  a  long  and  shame- 
ful neglect  of  all  the  arts  and  sciences,  our  common  speech 
is  extremely  corrupt ;  and  the  evidences  of  bad  taste,  both 
as  to  thought  and  language,  are  visible  in  all  our  proceed- 
ings, public  and  private."* 

The  history  of  literature  in  such  a  community,  at  such  a 
period,  must  be  the  record,  not  of  any  concentrated  and 
continuous  literary  activity,  but  of  the  occasional  efforts 
of  cultivated  men  to  express  themselves,  for  practical  pur- 
poses, in  some  literary  form. 


II. 

DANIEL  DENTON,  the  son  of  a  minister  in  Connecticut, 
removed  in  1644  into  the  province  of  New  York,  where  he 
rose  to  distinction  both  as  a  land-owner  and  as  a  politician. 
In  1670,  apparently  with  the  view  of  attracting  immigra- 
tion to  that  province,  he  published,  in  London,  "  A  Brief 
Description  of  New  York," 4— a  book  of  twenty-two  pages, 
uncommonly  graphic  and  animated.  He  kept  closely  to  the 
facts  that  had  come  under  his  own  eyes,  prudently  declin- 

1  Wm.  Smith,  "  Hist.  N.  Y."  II.  113.  *  Ibid.  379. 

•  Ibid.  I.  328.       «  Reprinted,  New  York,  1845.  ed-  by  Gabriel  Furman. 


2C>8  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LI7^ERA  TURE. 

ing  to  say  anything  about  those  portions  of  the  province 
that  lay  "  to  the  northward  yet  undiscovered,"  or  in  "  the 
bowels  of  the  earth  not  yet  opened."  Even  on  the  basis 
of  literal  and  visible  fact,  however,  he  had  enough,  both 
useful  and  beautiful,  to  justify  his  enthusiasm  for  the  land 
which  he  sought  to  make  known  to  English  emigrants. 
He  gives  an  account  of  its  fitness  for  all  sorts  of  industrial 
success  ;  not  forgetting  to  describe  its  natural  charms,  as 
in  May,  when  "  you  shall  see  the  woods  and  fields  so  curi- 
ously bedecked  with  roses,  and  an  innumerable  multitude 
of  delightful  flowers,  .  .  .  that  you  may  behold  nature 
contending  with  art,  and  striving  to  equal  if  not  excel 
many  gardens  in  England  ;  "  l  and  "  divers  sorts  of  singing- 
birds,  whose  chirping  notes  salute  the  ears  of  travellers 
with  an  harmonious  discord  ;  and  in  every  pond  and  brook, 
green,  silken  frogs,  who,  warbling  forth  their  untuned 
tunes,  strive  to  bear  a  part  in  this  music."2  Having  given 
a  sufficient  account  of  the  natural  and  social  advantages 
of  the  province,  he  seeks  to  win  inhabitants  for  it  by  ap- 
pealing to  the  English  love  of  personal  independence  and 
domestic  thrift:  "  If  there  be  any  terrestrial  happiness  to 
be  had  by  people  of  all  ranks,  especially  of  an  inferior  rank, 
it  must  certainly  be  here.  Here  any  one  may  furnish  him- 
self with  land,  and  live  rent-free  ;  yea,  with  such  a  quantity 
of  land  that  he  may  weary  himself  with  walking  over  his 
fields  of  corn  and  all  sorts  of  grain.  .  .  .  Here  those  which 
Fortune  hath  frowned  upon  in  England  to  deny  them  an 
inheritance  amongst  their  brethren,  or  such  as  by  their 
utmost  labors  can  scarcely  procure  a  living,  .  .  .  may  pro- 
cure here  inheritances  of  lands  and  possessions,  stock  them- 
selves with  all  sorts  of  cattle,  enjoy  the  benefit  of  them 
whilst  they  live,  and  leave  them  to  the  benefit  of  their 
children  when  they  die.  Here  you  need  not  trouble  the 
shambles  for  meat,  nor  bakers  and  brewers  for  beer  and 
bread,  nor  run  to  a  linen-draper  for  a  supply.  ...  If  there 

1  "  A  Brief  Description,"  etc.  4.  *  Ibid.  5-6. 


DANIEL  LEEDS.  2OQ 

be  any  terrestrial  Canaan,  'tis  surely  here,  where  the  land 
floweth  with  milk  and  honey.  The  inhabitants  are  blessed 
with  peace  and  plenty,  blessed  in  their  country,  blessed  in 
their  fields,  blessed  in  the  fruit  of  their  bodies,  in  the  fruit 
of  their  grounds,  in  the  increase  of  their  cattle,  horses,  and 
sheep,  blessed  in  their  basket  and  in  their  store ;  in  a 
word,  blessed  in  whatsoever  they  take  in  hand,  or  go 
about,  the  earth  yielding  plentiful  increase  to  all  their 
painful  labors." ! 

Precisely  fifteen  years  after  the  publication  of  Daniel 
Denton's  winsome  sketch  of  the  province  of  New  York, 
Thomas  Budd,  of  New  Jersey,  a  worthy  Quaker,  and  a 
man  of  much  importance  in  his  own  neighborhood,  pub- 
lished, likewise  at  London,  a  little  book  entitled  "  Good 
Order  established  in  Pennsylvania  and  New  Jersey  in 
America."*  The  purpose  of  this  book,  like  that  of  Daniel 
Denton,  was  to  catch  the  eye  of  emigrants ;  and  for  that 
purpose  it  perhaps  did  not  need,  as  certainly  it  did  not 
have,  much  literary  merit. 

Another  book  belonging  to  this  pioneer  period  of  litera- 
ture in  New  York  and  its  neighborhood,  is  a  very  curious 
one:  "  News  of  a  Trumpet  sounding  in  the  Wilderness ; 
or,  The  Quakers'  ancient  testimony  revived,  examined, 
and  compared  with  itself,  and  also  with  their  new  doc- 
trine— whereby  the  ignorant  may  learn  wisdom  and  the 
wise  advance  in  their  understandings;"  published  by  Wil- 
liam Bradford  in  1697,  and  written  by  Daniel  Leeds,  once 
a  Quaker  and  an  early  settler  in  Pennsylvania.  This  man, 
having  quarrelled  with  his  brethren  there,  abandoned  them 
and  finally  their  province,  and  established  himself  in  New 
York,  probably  in  1693,  where,  for  about  thirty  years,  he 
continued  in  his  famous  almanacs  that  warfare  against  the 
Quakers  which  he  had  begun  in  his  book. 


1  "  A  Brief  Description,"  etc.  19-21. 
*  Reprinted,  New  York,  1865,  ed.  by  Edward  Armstrong. 
VOL.  ii. — 14 


2io  HISTORY  OF  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

III. 

LEWIS  MORRIS,  born  in  1671,  on  the  paternal  estate  of 
Morrisania,  lived  a  long  and  vigorous  life  as  colonial  poli- 
tician in  New  York  and  New  Jersey;  was,  for  more  than 
twenty  years,  chief-justice  of  the  former  province,  and  died, 
in  1746,  as  royal  governor  of  the  latter ;  a  man  of  large  in- 
herited wealth,  of  high  social  consideration,  of  bold  and 
somewhat  unscrupulous  talent ;  a  natural  intriguer.  Though 
he  settled  into  manhood  sufficiently  sedate,  his  youth  was 
uncommonly  vivacious,  and  sparkled  long  afterward  in  a 
trail  of  amusing  traditions.  Being  left  an  orphan  in  his 
infancy,  he  came  under  the  care  of  an  uncle,  who  seems 
to  have  found  the  boy  hard  to  tame  into  industry  and 
propriety.  At  one  time,  he  had  for  his  tutor  an  enthusi- 
astic Quaker,  one  Hugh  Coppathwaite,  who  enjoyed  much 
of  the  divine  presence  through  various  inward  and  out- 
ward communications.  The  boy  conceived  the  happy 
thought  of  helping  his  preceptor  to  a  new  revelation,  and 
himself  to  a  holiday ;  and,  accordingly,  hiding  in  the 
branches  of  a  tree  under  which  the  Quaker  was  used  to 
walk,  the  lad  called  out  to  him  in  solemn  tones,  and  com- 
manded him  to  go  away  at  once,  and  preach  the  gospel 
among  the  Mohawks.  The  good  man  accepted  the  man- 
date as  the  very  voice  of  heaven,  and  was  on  the  point 
of  setting  out  to  obey  it,  when,  unluckily  for  the  boy, 
the  trick  was  discovered,  and  his  studies  were  not  inter- 
rupted.1 Subsequently,  breaking  away  from  all  restraints, 
he  roamed  into  Virginia  to  see  the  world,  thence  to  the 
West  Indies,  picking  up  a  living  as  best  he  could  ;  after 
some  years,  the  vagabond  came  home,  was  pardoned  by 
his  uncle,  married,  and  entered  soon  upon  his  distin- 
guished public  career.  He  was  an  able  speaker ;  loved 
power  over  men,  and  the  arts  by  which  it  is  gained  ;  and 
though  his  own  contact  with  books  must  have  been  casual 

1  Wm.  Smith,  "  Hist.  N.  Y."  ed.  1814,  202. 


LE  WIS  MORRIS.  2 1 1 

and  irregular,  he  greatly  enjoyed  literature  and  the  society 
of  literary  men.1  There  remains  a  letter  of  his  to  his  Lon- 
don bookseller,  for  the  year  1739,  containing  a  list  of 
books  which  he  desired,  and  indicating  that,  even  at  the 
age  of  sixty-eight,  his  mind  was  reaching  out  toward  new 
studies,  as  well  as  old  ones :  law  books,  political  treatises, 
theological  writings,  histories,  a  Hebrew  grammar,  an 
Arabic  grammar,  and  an  edition  of  John  Milton.2 

He  wrote  nothing  that  he  thought  of  as  literature ;  but 
the  brightness  and  vigor  of  his  mind  are  shown  in  his  cor- 
respondence, and  in  his  state-papers.  He  appears  to  have 
been  not  incapable  even  of  sportive  rhymes  on  occasion. 
For  instance,  in  1709,  in  sending  to  the  governor  of  New 
York,  Lord  Lovelace,  a  memorial  for  the  board  of  trade, 
he  added  a  private  address  on  his  own  account,  beginning 
with  these  lines : 

"  As  kings  at  their  meals  sit  alone  at  a  table, 
Not  deigning  to  eat  with  the  lords  of  the  rabble, 
So  the  great  Lewis  Morris  presents  an  address 
By  himself,  all  alone,  not  one  else  of  the  mess."  * 

In  1735,  he  went  to  England,  to  make  complaint  to  the 
parliament  and  ministry  respecting  the  conduct  of  William 
Cosby,  at  that  time  governor  of  New  York,  under  royal 
appointment ;  and  his  letters  to  friends  at  home  are  good 
examples  of  the  sprightliness  of  his  mind.  The  visit  of 
this  American  politician  to  the  metropolis,  appears  to  have 
been  the  means  of  a  rough  disenchantment,  robbing  him 
of  many  beautiful  provincial  illusions  respecting  the  ten- 
der and  paternal  care  with  which  English  statesmen  were 
supposed  to  deal  with  Americans  and  their  affairs :  "  You 
have  very  imperfect  notions  of  the  world  on  this  side  of 
the  water — I  mean  that  world  with  which  I  have  to  do. 
They  are  unconcerned  at  the  sufferings  of  the  people  in 

1  Wm.  Smith,  "  Hist.  N.  Y."  ed.  1814,  202. 
1  "  Papers  of  Lewis  Morris,"  47. 

*Ibid.  322.     By  "  N.  J.  Archives,"  III.  381-382,  pub.  1881,  it  appears 
that  these  lines  were  written  at  Morris,  and  not  by  him. 


2 1 2  HIS  TOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITER  A  TURE. 

America.  ...  It  may  be  you  will  be  surprised  to  hear 
that  the  most  nefarious  crime  a  governor  can  commit  is 
not,  by  some,  counted  so  bad,  as  the  crime  of  complaining 
of  it ;  the  last  is  an  arraigning  of  the  ministry  that  advised 
the  sending  of  him." l  "  We  talk  in  America  of  appli- 
cations to  parliaments.  Alas !  my  friend,  parliaments  are 
parliaments  everywhere ;  here,  as  well  as  with  us,  though 
more  numerous.  We  admire  the  heavenly  bodies  which 
glitter  at  a  distance  ;  but  should  we  be  removed  into  Jupi- 
ter or  Saturn,  perhaps  we  should  find  it  composed  of  as 
dark  materials  as  our  own  earth.  .  .  .  We  have  a  par- 
liament and  ministry,  some  of  whom,  I  am  apt  to  believe, 
know  that  there  are  plantations  and  governors — but  not 
quite  so  well  as  we  do.  Like  the  frogs  in  the  fable,  the 
mad  pranks  of  a  plantation  governor  is  sport  to  them, 
though  death  to  us ;  and  [they]  seem  less  concerned  in 
our  contests  than  we  are  at  those  between  crows  and  king- 
birds. Governors  are  called  the  king's  representatives; 
and  when  by  repeated  instances  of  avarice,  cruelty,  and 
injustice,  they  extort  complaints  from  the  injured,  in  terms 
truly  expressive  of  the  violence  committed  and  injuries 
suffered,  it  must  be  termed  a  flying  in  the  face  of  govern- 
ment ;  the  king's  representative  must  be  treated  with  soft- 
ness and  decency;  the  thing  complained  of  is  nothing 
near  so  criminal  in  them,  as  the  manner  of  complaint  in 
the  injured.  And  who  is  there  that  is  equal  to  the  task  of 
procuring  redress?  Changing  the  man  is  far  from  an  ade- 
quate remedy,  if  the  thing  remains  the  same ;  and  we  had 
as  well  keep  an  ill,  artless  governor  we  know,  as  to  change 
him  for  one  equally  ill,  with  more  art,  that  we  do  not 
know.  One  of  my  neighbors  used  to  say  that  he  always 
rested  better  in  a  bed  abounding  with  fleas  after  they  had 
filled  their  bellies,  than  to  change  it  for  a  new  one  equally 
full  of  hungry  ones;  the  fleas  having  no  business  there  but 
to  eat.  The  inference  is  easy."2 

1  "  Papers  of  Lewis  Morris."  24-2?.  *  Ibid.  23-24. 


CADWALLADER  GOLDEN. 


IV. 


213 


CADWALLADER  GOLDEN  was  the  son  of  a  Presbyterian 
minister  in  Scotland,  but  was  himself  accidentally  born  in 
Ireland.  He  was  educated  at  the  University  of  Edinburgh ; 
after  studying  medicine  there  and  in  London,  he  emigrated 
to  America  in  1710,  and  settled  at  Philadelphia  for  the 
practice  of  his  profession.  In  1718,  at  the  friendly  solicita- 
tion of  General  Robert  Hunter,  the  governor  of  New  York, 
he  removed  to  that  province,  where  he  received  the  office 
of  surveyor-general ;  became  proprietor  of  a  large  estate 
in  lands ;  was  made  a  member  of  the  king's  council,  and  in 
the  latter  part  of  his  life,  lieutenant-governor,  with  frequent 
exercise  of  the  duties  of  governor;  and  died,  in  Septem- 
ber, 1776,  aged  eighty-eight,  a  loyalist  to  his  king,  and  bit- 
terly hated  by  the  people  whom  he  had  served  so  long, 
but  whose  later  movements  toward  revolution  he  had  felt 
it  his  duty  to  resist. 

Thus,  the  life  of  Cadwallader  Golden,  though  it  had  a 
patriarchal  length,  had  not  the  patriarchal  quietude;  it 
was  a  life  of  manifold  outward  occupation,  and  latterly  of 
political  turmoil  and  rancor ;  and  yet,  so  valiant  and  crav- 
ing was  his  spirit,  that  he  found  time,  during  all  those  busy 
lustrums  of  his,  to  be  not  only  a  cultivator  of  various  learn- 
ing, but  one  of  the  leaders  of  mankind  in  its  cultivation. 
A  monument  of  his  industry  and  of  his  versatility,  remains 
to  us  in  the  vast  mass  of  his  writings,  published  and  un- 
published, which  deal,  acutely  and  philosophically,  with 
almost  every  great  topic  of  human  interest, — divinity, 
ethics,  metaphysics,  politics,  mathematics,  history,  geology, 
botany,  optics,  zoology,  medicine,  agriculture,  and  even 
certain  improvements  in  the  mechanic  arts,  as  stereotypy.1 

The  one  production  of  his  that  most  nearly  approaches  a 
purely  literary  effort,  is  "  The  History  of  the  Five  Indian 


1  The  rich  Golden  MSS.  are  in  possession  of  the  N.  Y.  Hist.  Soc.,  and 
rell  deserve  careful  editing  and  publication. 


214 


HISTORY  OF  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 


Nations."  Of  this  work,  the  first  part,  bringing  the  nar- 
rative down  to  1688,  was  originally  published  in  New  York, 
in  1727;*  and  the  second  part,  continuing  the  narrative  to 
the  peace  of  Ryswick,  1697,  was  published  in  London,  in 
I747.2  The  book  is  principally  a  sketch  of  five  powerful 
allied  Indian  tribes  then  residing  in  the  northern  part 
of  the  province  of  New  York,  —  their  forms  of  govern- 
ment, their  wars  with  hostile  tribes,  their  conflicts  and 
treaties  with  Frenchmen,  Dutchmen,  and  Englishmen ; 
upon  the  whole,  a  very  slender,  not  altogether  accurate, 
and  not  in  the  least  interesting  account  of  sundry  parcels 
of  savages,  of  their  steady  employment  in  scalping  and  in 
getting  scalped,  mitigated  by  occasional  interludes  of  pala- 
ver with  one  another  and  with  white  men.  Though  the 
author  writes  with  ease,  and  generally  with  verbal  correct- 
ness, it  is  impossible  for  him  to  redeem  his  book  from  the 
curse  of  being  a  history  of  what  deserves  no  history.  A 
single  episode,  giving  the  exploits  of  the  Algonquin  chief, 
Piscaret,  has  some  dramatic  vividness,  even  though  also 
the  flavor  of  palpable  myth  ;8  while  the  best  piece  of  writ- 
ing in  the  book,  is  its  dedication  to  William  Burnet,  the 
governor  of  New  York, — particularly,  the  passage  wherein 
the  author  celebrates  the  austere  virtues  of  the  savages 
whose  history  he  records  :  "  The  Five  Nations  are  a  poor, 
barbarous  people,  under  the  darkest  ignorance  ;  and  yet  a 
bright  and  noble  genius  shines  through  these  black  clouds. 
None  of  the  greatest  Roman  heroes  have  discovered  a 
greater  love  to  their  country,  or  a  greater  contempt  of 
death,  than  these  barbarians  have  done,  when  life  and  lib- 
erty came  in  competition.  Indeed,  I  think  our  Indians 
have  outdone  the  Romans  in  this  particular ;  for  some  of 
the  greatest  Romans  have  murdered  themselves,  to  avoid 

1  An  exact  reprint  of  this  edition,  with  an  introduction  and  notes  by  John 
Gilmary  Shea,  was  made  in  N.  Y.  in  1866. 

8  A  very  corrupt  edition,  however,  containing  omissions  and  additions  un- 
authorized by  Golden. 

1  "  The  History  of  the  Five  Indian  Nations,"  Shea's  ed.  12-15. 


DANIEL  COXE. 


215 


shame  or  torments;  whereas  our  Indians  have  refused  to 
die,  meanly,  with  the  least  pain, 'when  they  thought  their 
country's  honor  would  be  at  stake  by  it,  but  gave  their 
bodies  willingly  up  to  the  most  cruel  torments  of  their 
enemies,  to  show  that  the  Five  Nations  consisted  of  men 
whose  courage  and  resolution  could  not  be  shaken."  J 

The  hope  that  these  vivacious  sentences  awaken  in  us, 
of  some  broad  and  fine  human  interest  connected  with  the 
history  of  the  author's  nude  patriots  and  stoics,  is  not 
fulfilled. 

V. 

In  the  year  1722,  there  was  published  in  London  a  book 
respecting  America,  which  deserved  the  deep  attention  of 
English  and  American  statesmen  at  that  time,  and  which, 
on  one  account,  is  still  worthy  of  remembrance  by  us.  It 
bore  this  formidable  title :  "  A  Description  of  the  English 
Province  of  Carolana,  by  the  Spaniards  called  Florida,  and 
by  the  French  La  Louisiane  ;  as  also  the  great  and  famous 
river,  Meschacebe  or  Mississippi,  the  five  vast  navigable 
lakes  of  fresh-water,  and  the  parts  adjacent ;  together  with 
an  account  of  the  commodities,  of  the  growth  and  produc- 
tion of  the  said  province  ;  and  a  preface  containing  some 
considerations  on  the  consequences  of  the  French  making 
settlements  there." 

The  author  was  Daniel  Coxe,  a  man  of  wealth,  and  of 
high  social  and  political  influence  in  New  Jersey,  who  had 
inherited  from  his  father  a  claim  to  the  vast  territory 
described  in  his  book.  It  is  the  preface  of  the  book, 
however,  that  is  now  of  special  interest  to  us ;  for  in  that 
preface,  the  author  discussed,  at  great  length  and  with 
great  ability,  the  condition  and  the  perils  of  the  English 
colonies  in  America,  the  legal  right  of  the  English  to  the 
interior  of  the  continent,  and  especially,  the  strategy  to  be 
pursued  by  enlightened  statesmanship  in  realizing  that 

1  "  The  History  of  the  Five  Nations,"  Dedication,  3-4. 


2 1 6  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITER  A  TURE. 

right  in  opposition  to  the  competing  claims  of  the  Spanish 
and  the  French.  The  chief  element  in  the  strategy  pro- 
posed by  him,  is  described  in  one  word — union.  Thus,  in 
1722,  Daniel  Coxe  publicly  explained  and  advocated  a 
plan  of  union  among  the  American  colonies, — the  details 
of  which  closely  resemble  those  brought  forward  by  Frank- 
lin, thirty-two  years  afterward,  at  the  famous  congress  of 
Albany :  "  That  all  the  colonies  ...  be  united  under  a 
legal,  regular,  and  firm  establishment ;  over  which  ...  a 
lieutenant  or  supreme  governor  may  be  ...  appointed  to 
preside  on  the  spot,  to  whom  the  governors  of  each  colony 
shall  be  subordinate;"  that  the  council  or  assembly  of 
each  province  elect  annually  two  delegates  "to  a  great 
council  or  general  convention  of  the  estates  of  the  colo- 
nies ; "  that  the  latter  "  consult  and  advise  for  the  good  of 
the  whole."  "A  coalition  or  union  of  this  nature,"  adds 
Daniel  Coxe,  in  his  earnest  argument  for  it,  "  tempered 
with  and  grounded  on  prudence,  moderation,  and  justice, 
and  a  generous  encouragement  given  to  the  labor,  indus- 
try, and  good  management  of  all  sorts  and  conditions  of 
persons,  .  .  .  will,  in  all  probability,  lay  a  sure  and  lasting 
foundation  of  dominion,  strength,  and  trade,  sufficient  not 
only  to  secure  and  promote  the  prosperity  of  the  planta- 
tions, but  to  revive  and  greatly  increase  the  late  flourish- 
ing state  and  condition  of  Great  Britain."  l 


VI. 

JONATHAN  DICKINSON  was  born  at  Hatfield,  Massachu- 
setts, in  1688 ;  and  was  graduated  at  Yale  College,  in  1706. 
In  1708,  he  went  to  Elizabethtown,  New  Jersey;  and  there, 
for  the  subsequent  thirty-nine  years,  he  lived  a  most  ener- 
getic life,  as  minister,  physician,  educator,  and  author, 


1  "A  Description,"  etc.  ed.  1726,  Pref.  It  may  be  mentioned  that,  in 
1697,  William  Penn  had  suggested  a  similar  plan  of  union  among  the  colo- 
nies. Hildreth,  "  Hist.  U.  S."  II.  444. 


JON  A  THA  N  DICKINSON.  2 1 7 

displaying  great  ability  in  all  these  spheres,  and  acquiring 
a  commanding  influence  through  the  whole  land.  He  was 
a  leader  in  ecclesiastical  politics  in  the  middle  colonies; 
he  was  a  fascinating  and  mighty  pulpit-orator ;  he  was  the 
principal  founder  of  the  College  of  New  Jersey,  and  its 
first  president ;  in  person  he  was  of  so  saintly  and  impres- 
sive an  aspect, "  that  the  wicked  seemed  to  tremble  in  his 
presence ; " l  his  long  life  was  so  pure,  consistent,  and 
noble,  that  "  the  memory  of  it  is  still  fragrant  on  the  spot 
where  he  lived,"  and  the  descendants  "  of  those  who  knew 
and  loved  him  cherish  an  hereditary  reverence  for  his  name 
and  his  grave."* 

He  was  a  voluminous  author,  his  chief  distinction  point- 
ing toward  skill  in  theological  controversy.  He  had  the 
talent  of  a  logician  ;  he  was  an  intrepid  debater ;  as  a 
protagonist  for  Calvinism,  he  stood  in  reputation  among 
American  theologians  of  his  time,  next  to  Jonathan  Ed- 
wards; and  a  great  Scottish  divine*  testified  that  even 
"the  British  Isles  had  produced  no  such  writers  on  divinity 
in  the  eighteenth  century,"  as  were  these  two  men, — both 
born  on  the  confines  of  the  New  England  forests,  and  both 
bred  at  Yale  College. 

Perhaps  the  most  interesting  specimen  of  his  literary 
and  dialectical  gifts,  is  his  "  Familiar  Letters  to  a  Gentle- 
man, upon  a  Variety  of  seasonable  and  important  Subjects 
in  Religion;"4  in  which  are  these  sentences,  portraying 
the  logical  difficulties  to  be  assumed  by  any  one  who  shall 
reject  the  historical  verity  of  the  New  Testament :  "  If  this 
history  be  not  true,  then  all  the  known  laws  of  nature  were 
changed ;  all  the  motives  and  incentives  to  human  actions, 
that  ever  had  obtained  in  the  world,  have  been  entirely  in- 
verted ;  the  wickedest  men  in  the  world  have  taken  the 
greatest  pains  and  endured  the  greatest  hardship  and  mis- 

1  David  Austin,  in  W.  B.  Sprague,  "  Annals  of  Am.  Pulpit,"  IIL  17. 

•  Ibid.  17. 

1  Dr.  John  Erskine,  ibid.  17. 

4  Boston,  1745. 


2 1 8  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITER  A  TURE. 

ery,  to  invent,  practise,  and  propagate  the  most  holy  reli- 
gion that  ever  was ;  and  not  only  the  apostles  and  first 
preachers  of  the  gospel,  but  whole  nations  of  men  and  all 
sorts  of  men,  Christian,  Jew,  and  pagan,  were — nobody  can 
imagine  how  or  why — confederated  to  propagate  a  known 
cheat,  against  their  own  honor,  interest,  and  safety ;  and 
multitudes  of  men,  without  any  prospect  of  advantage, 
here  or  hereafter,  were  brought  most  constantly  and  tena- 
ciously to  profess  what  they  knew  to  be  false,  to  exchange 
all  the  comforts  and  pleasures  of  life  for  shame  and  con- 
tempt, for  banishments,  scourgings,  imprisonments,  and 
death ;  in  a  word,  voluntarily  to  expose  themselves  to  be 
hated  both  of  God  and  man,  and  that  without  any  known 
motive  whatsoever."1 

VII. 

In  the  year  1747,  was  published  in  New  York  a  little 
book  entitled  "  Philosophic  Solitude ;  or,  The  Choice  of  a 
Rural  Life," — a  poem  of  nearly  seven  hundred  lines,  an- 
nouncing itself  as  the  production  of  "  a  gentleman  edu- 
cated at  Yale  College."  This  gentleman  proved  to  be 
William  Livingston,  then  twenty-four  years  old,  just  be- 
ginning the  practice  of  the  law  in  New  York,  and  destined 
to  a  long  and  illustrious  career  as  a  statesman  in  the  era 
of  the  Revolution.  During  his  whole  life,  he  was  absorbed 
in  stormy  and  agitating  public  movements ;  yet  he  found 
time  to  retain  an  uncommon  intimacy  with  the  best  litera- 
ture, and  to  exercise  in  many  ways  his  own  remarkable 
aptitude  for  literary  work.  This  poem  is  obviously  the 
effort  of  a  rhyming  apprentice,  still  in  bondage  to  the 
methods  of  his  master,  Alexander  Pope ;  yet  he  catches 
the  knack  of  his  master  with  a  cleverness  proving  the  pos- 
sibility of  original  work,  on  his  own  account,  by  and  by. 
It  illustrates,  likewise,  a  trait  of  human  nature,  that  this 
young  lawyer  and  politician,  having  given  himself  to  a 

1  "Familiar  Letters,"  etc.  58. 


WILLIAM  LIVINGSTON.  2\g 

practical  career  in  the  thick  of  the  world's  affairs,  and 
one  made  tumultuous  by  his  own  aggressive  spirit,  should 
have  begun  it  by  depicting,  in  enthusiastic  verse,  his 
preference  for  a  life  of  absolute  retirement  and  serene 
meditation : 

"  Let  ardent  heroes  seek  renown  in  arms, 
Pant  after  fame,  and  rush  to  war's  alarms  ; 
To  shining  palaces,  let  fools  resort, 
And  dunces  cringe  to  be  esteemed  at  court : 
Mine  be  the  pleasures  of  a  rural  life, 
From  noise  remote,  and  ignorant  of  strife  ; 
Far  from  the  painted  belle,  the  white-gloved  bean, 
The  lawless  masquerade  and  midnight  show  ; 
From  ladies,  lapdogs,  courtiers,  garters,  stars, 
Fops,  fiddlers,  tyrants,  emperors,  and  czars."  • 

He  then  pictures  for  us  the  situation  of  the  home  in  the 
country,  in  which  he  would  spend  his  tranquil  life, — its 
furniture,  its  surroundings ;  he  sings  over  again  his  love 
of  solitude  ;  he  mentions  the  sort  of  friends  whom  he 
would  have  within  call ;  he  portrays  the  frame  of  devotion 
and  calm  contemplation  which  should  abide  with  him. 
His  hermitage  should  be  far  from 

"  Prime-ministers,  and  sycophantic  knaves, 
Illustrious  villains,  and  illustrious  slaves."1 

There,  he  would 

"  live  retired,  contented,  and  serene, 
Forgot,  unknown,  unenvied,  and  unseen." » 

He  would  have  books  for  his  most  intimate  friends ;  he 
would  have  Virgil  as  prince  of  the  classic  bards ;  he  would 
be  surrounded  by  Milton,  Pope,  Dryden,  and  "  the  gentle 
Watts ; "  also,  by  Locke,  Raleigh,  Denham  ;  among  philoso- 
phers, he  would  give  the  place  of  honor  to  Newton.  More- 
over, he  would  alleviate  his  solitude  by  the  presence  of  a 


Philosophic  Solitude,"  13.  •  Ibid.  16.  «  Ibid.  17. 


220  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

wife.     This  being  should  be   none   of  those  "ideal  god. 

desses  "  who 

"  to  church  repair, 
Peep  through  the  fan,  and  mutter  o'er  a  prayer; 


Or,  deeply  studied  in  coquettish  rules, 
Aim  wily  glances  at  unthinking  fools." 


She  is  to  be  not  an  ideal  goddess,  but  a  literal  one,  an 
absolutely  faultless  being,  who  having  accepted  his  ad- 
dresses  becomes,  he  says, 

"  Imparadised  within  my  eager  arms." 

He  then  reaches  the  climax  of  his  poem  by  depicting 
the  crowning  experience  of  his  "  philosophic  solitude  "- 
a  solitude  the  peculiar  rigors  of  which  would  not  seem  to 
have  required  a  vast  exertion  of  philosophy  to  endure  : 

"  With  her  I'd  spend  the  pleasurable  day, 
While  fleeting  minutes  gayly  danced  away  : 

I'd  reign  the  happy  monarch  of  her  charms ; 

Oft  in  her  panting  bosom  would  I  lay, 

And,  in  dissolving  raptures,  melt  away ; 

Then  lulled  by  nightingales  to  balmy  rest, 

My  blooming  fair  should  slumber  at  my  breast."* 

The  voluptuous  languors  of  this  poem,  report  a  quality 
in  the  author  that  did  not  control  him ;  and  henceforward, 
through  nearly  half  a  century,  his  real  life  was  a  battle  for 
stern  and  great  ideas.  He  was  of  Scottish  ancestry ;  and 
if  he  had  within  him  the  romantic  intensity  of  his  race,  he 
had  likewise  its  intellectual  ruggedness,  its  iron  grasp  of 
conviction,  its  unsubmissiveness,  its  onrushing  and  most 
fervid  pleasure  in  strife,  its  nerve  of  invincible  endur- 
ance,— a  double  strain  sent  down  to  him  from  the  old 
Scottish  ballad-makers  and  from  the  old  Scottish  cove- 
nanters. The  practice  of  his  profession  did  not  consume 
his  energy ;  he  was  felt,  as  a  pamphleteer  and  as  a  journalist, 

1  "  Philosophic  Solitude,"  40-41.  *  Ibid.  45. 


WILLIAM  LIVINGSTON.  221 

in  all  the  topics  that  came  up  for  debate  in  the  colony  in 
those  years,  especially  those  connected  with  the  denom- 
inational control  of  King's  College,  with  military  opera- 
tions, and  with  the  establishment  of  an  American  Episco- 
pate. He  was  a  resolute  member  of  the  Reformed  Dutch 
Church.  By  his  newspaper  articles  against  the  efforts  of 
the  Episcopalians  to  obtain  the  mastery  of  King's  College, 
he  had  brought  upon  himself  the  charges  of  atheism,  deism, 
and  Presbyterianism ;  and  with  reference  to  these  impu- 
tations, he  retorted  upon  his  opponents  with  his  usual 
wit  and  vigor,  in  a  travesty  on  the  Thirty-nine  Articles : 
"I.I  believe  the  Scriptures  of  the  Old  and  New  Testament, 
without  any  foreign  comments  or  human  explanations  but 
my  own  ;  for  which  I  should,  doubtless,  be  honored  with 
martyrdom,  did  I  not  live  in  a  government  which  restrains 
that  fiery  zeal  which  would  reduce  a  man's  body  to  ashes, 
for  the  illumination  of  his  understanding.  ...  5.  I  believe 
that  the  word  orthodox  is  a  hard,  equivocal,  priestly 
term  that  has  caused  the  effusion  of  more  blood  than 
all  the  Roman  emperors  put  together.  ...  7.  I  believe 
that  to  defend  the  Christian  religion  is  one  thing,  and  to 
knock  a  man  on  the  head  for  being  of  a  different  opinion 
is  another  thing.  .  .  .  II.  I  believe  that  he  who  feareth 
God  and  worketh  righteousness,  will  be  accepted  of  Him, 
even  though  he  refuse  to  worship  any  man  or  order  of 
men  into  the  bargain.  ...  13.  I  believe  that  riches,  orna- 
ments, and  ceremonies  were  assumed  by  churches  for  the 
same  reason  that  garments  were  invented  by  our  first 
parents.  ...  15.  I  believe  that  a  man  may  be  a  good 
Christian,  though  he  be  of  no  sect  in  Christendom.  .  .  . 
17.  I  believe  that  our  faith,  like  our  stomachs,  may  be 
overcharged,  especially  if  we  are  prohibited  to  chew  what 
we  are  commanded  to  swallow.  ...  38.  I  believe  that 
the  virulence  of  some  of  the  clergy  against  my  specula- 
tions, proceeds  not  from  their  affection  to  Christianity, 
which  is  founded  on  too  firm  a  basis  to  be  shaken  by  the 
freest  inquiry,  and  the  divine  authority  of  which  I  sin- 


222  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICA Ar  LITEA'A  TURE. 

cerely  believe, — without  receiving  a  farthing  for  saying  so; 
but  from  an  apprehension  of  bringing  into  contempt  their 
ridiculous  claims  and  unreasonable  pretensions,  which  may 
justly  tremble  at  the  slightest  scrutiny,  and  which  I  believe 
I  shall  more  and  more  put  into  a  panic,  in  defiance  of  both 
press  and  pulpit."1 

His  most  serious  effort  as  a  prose  writer,  during  this 
period  of  our  literary  history,  was  "A  Review  of  the  Mili- 
tary Operations  in  North  America,"  from  1753  to  1756. 
This  work  is  in  the  form  of  a  letter  addressed  to  a  noble- 
man, and  was  first  published,  without  the  author's  name, 
in  London,  in  the  year  1756.  Its  historical  value  is  con- 
siderable,— principally,  as  embalming  the  fury  of  partisan- 
ship that  raged,  at  that  time,  between  the  great  families  of 
the  colony  of  New  York,  and  that  drew  within  its  folds 
the  reputations  of  Sir  William  Johnson  on  the  one  hand, 
and  of  Governor  William  Shirley  on  the  other.  As  a  literary 
work,  the  book  rises  far  above  the  mob  of  political  pam- 
phlets. Though  somewhat  lacking  in  concentration,  it  is 
written  with  much  elegance ;  and  it  is  especially  remark- 
able for  its  elaborate  portraits  of  the  great  men  of  the  day. 
The  painter  of  these  portraits  makes  no  pretence  of  im- 
partiality, but  tints  his  canvas  at  will  with  the  frankness 
of  his  love  or  of  his  hate. 

It  is  not  disagreeable  to  be  reminded,  once  more,  of  the 
tender  and  gallant  vein  that  streaked  the  nature  of  this 
robust  political  combatant ;  and  to  find  that,  even  amid 
the  rancors  of  his  strenuous  career,  there  were  moods  in 
which  he  could  dash  off  verses  so  graceful  and  so  sprightly 
as  these  : 

"Soon  as  I  saw  Eliza's  blooming  charms, 
I  longed  to  clasp  the  fair  one  in  my  arms. 
Her  every  feature  proved  a  pointed  dart 
That  pierced  with  pleasing  pain  my  wounded  heart  ; 

1  From  No.  46  of  "  The  Independent  Reflector,"  as  reprinted  in  T.  Sedg- 
wick,  "  Life  of  W.  Livingston,"  86-87. 


WILLIAM  SMITH.  22$ 

And  yet,  this  beauty — it  transcends  belief— 
This  blooming  beauty  is  an  arrant  thief. 
Attend  :  her  numerous  thefts  I  will  rehearse 
In  honest  narrative  and  faithful  verse. 

From  the  bright  splendor  of  the  noonday  sky, 

She  stole  the  sparkling  lustre  of  her  eye. 

Her  cheeks,  though  lovely  red,  still  more  to  adorn, 

She  filched  the  blushes  of  the  orient  morn. 

To  embalm  her  lips,  she  robbed  the  honey-dew ; 

To  increase  their  bloom,  the  rose-bud  of  its  hue. 


Her  voice,  enchanting  to  the  dullest  ears, 

She  pillaged  from  the  music  of  the  spheres  ; 

To  make  her  neck  still  lovelier  to  the  sight, 

She  robbed  the  ermine  of  its  spotless  white  ; 

From  Virgil's  Juno,  Jove's  fictitious  mate, 

She  stole  the  queen-like  and  majestic  gait. 

Of  all  her  charms,  she  robbed  the  Cyprian  queen, 

And,  still  insatiate,  stripped  the  Graces  of  their  mien. 

But  now,  to  perfect  an  harmonious  whole, 

With  those  internal  charms  that  can't  be  stole, 

Kind  Heaven,  without  her  thieving,  took  delight 

To  grant  supernal  grace,  and  inward  light : 

To  charms  angelic,  it  vouchsafed  to  impart 

Angelic  virtues,  and  an  angel  heart. 

Thus  fair  in  form,  embellished  thus  in  mind, 

All  beauteous  outward,  inward  all  refined, 

What  could  induce  Eliza  still  to  steal, 

And  make  poor  plundered  me  her  theft  to  feel  ? 

For,  last,  she  stole  (if  with  ill-purposed  art 

I'll  ne'er  forgive  the  theft)  she  stole — my  heart; 

Yes,  yes,  I  will,  if  she  will  but  incline 

To  give  me  half  of  hers,  for  all  the  whole  of  mine."1 


VIII. 

WILLIAM  SMITH  was  the  son  of  an  eminent  lawyer  of 
New  York,  where  he  was  born  in  1728.     He  was  graduated 

1  T.  Sedgwick,  "Life  of  W.  Livingston,"  117-118. 


£24  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITER  A  TURE. 

at  Yale  College,  in  1745.  Devoting  himself  to  the  profes- 
sions of  law  and  of  politics,  he  speedily  rose  to  distinction 
in  both.  During  the  Revolutionary  War,  he  was  a  loyal- 
ist; in  1783,  he  went  to  England,  and  three  years  later, 
was  rewarded  for  his  fidelity  to  the  crown,  by  the  appoint- 
ment of  chief-justice  of  Canada.  In  Canada,  he  died  in  1793. 

While  still  a  very  young  man,  he  gave  great  attention  to 
the  legal  and  political  records  of  his  native  province, — an 
experience  that  led  him  to  write  a"  History  of  New  York, 
from  the  First  Discovery  to  the  Year  1732."  This  work, 
which  was  first  published  in  London,  in  I757,1  is  a  strong 
and  clear  piece  of  work,  with  the  tone  of  a  scholar  and  a 
gentleman,  somewhat  dashed  by  provincialism.  Himself 
a  New  York  politician,  and  the  son  of  one,  it  was  not  easy 
for  him,  in  dealing  with  the  story  of  New  York  politics, 
wholly  to  suppress  his  partisan  prejudices ;  and  his  narra- 
tive, as  he  admitted,  "  deserves  not  the  name  of  a  history."  2 
It  is  an  able  and  sturdy  historical  pamphlet,  aggravated  by 
vast  public  documents  quoted  in  bulk.  Although  he  be- 
lieved that  in  his  book  the  laws  of  truth  had  not  been  in- 
fringed, either  "  by  positive  assertions,  oblique,  insidious 
hints,  wilful  suppressions,  or  corrupt  misrepresentations," 
and  that  in  his  writing  of  it  he  had  chosen  "  rather  to  be 
honest  and  dull  than  agreeable  and  false," 3  he  was  charged 
by  a  contemporary,  Cadwallader  Colden,4  with  having 
"  wilfully  misrepresented  "  some  things ;  while  in  our  own 
time,  the  ablest  of  the  historians  of  New  York,  John  Ro- 
meyn  Brodhead,5  has  declared  that,  in  several  instances, 
William  Smith  gave  utterance  to  "  fabulous  "  statements. 

In  his  book,  it  is  interesting  to  note  the  tokens  of  Amer- 
ican sensitiveness,  even  in  that  age,  to  the  infinite  and  se- 
rene ignorance  prevalent  among  the  people  of  England 

1  It  has  been  several  times  reprinted  ;  but  the  only  satisfactory  edition  is 
that  published  by  the  N.  Y.  Hist.  Soc.,  in  2  vols.,  1829.  In  this  edition,  the 
work  is  brought  down  by  the  author  to  1762. 

*  Pref.  to  ed.  of  1814,  xiv.  «  Ibid.  xiv. 

4  N.  Y.  Hist.  Soc.  Coll.  for  1868,  181.        *  "  Hist.  N  Y."  I.  44,  note. 


PENNSYLVANIA 


225 


concerning  their  own  plantations  in  America  :  "  The  main 
body  of  the  people  conceive  of  these  plantations  under  the 
idea  of  wild,  boundless,  inhospitable,  uncultivated  deserts; 
and  hence,  the  punishment  of  transportation  hither,  in  the 
judgment  of  most,  is  thought  not  much  less  severe  than 
an  infamous  death." l  His  portraits  of  the  long  line  of 
royal  governors  who  had  in  succession  preyed  upon  the 
province,  are  drawn  with  the  vivacity  of  genuine  feeling ; 
in  the  ardor  of  his  filial  pride  and  affection,  he  has  painted 
a  glowing  picture  of  the  learning  and  eloquence  of  his 
own  father;1  and  his  sketches  of  society  in  New  York  in 
his  time,  particularly  of  the  steady  preference  there  of  the 
pursuits  of  wealth  to  those  of  mere  knowledge,  have  a 
courageous  authenticity,  perhaps  not  altogether  obsolete 
even  yet.s 

In  the  year  1765,  was  published  "The  History  of  the 
Colony  of  Nova  Caesarea,  or  New  Jersey;"  the  author 
being  Samuel  Smith,  an  honest,  solid  Quaker,  a  native  of 
the  region  that  he  wrote  about,  himself  then  forty-five 
years  old.  His  book  is  a  dry,  ponderous  performance,  a 
compilation  of  dull  documents  and  dull  facts;  the  whole 
written,  doubtless,  with  great  patience,  and  only  to  be  read 
by  an  abundant  exercise  of  the  same  virtue. 

2.   PENNSYLVANIA. 
I. 

A  sagacious  English  student  of  American  history  has 
said  that  "  the  most  remarkable  of  the  American  colonies 
after  the  New  England  group,  is  Pennsylvania."4  In  spite 
of  all  outward  differences,  of  all  mutual  dislikes,  there  was 
an  inward  kinship  between  the  Quakers  of  Pennsylvania 
and  the  Puritans  of  New  England.  "  I  came  for  the  Lord's 

1 "  Hist  of  N.  Y."  ed.  of  1814,  Prcf.  ix.        *  Ibid.  ed.  of  1829.  II.  48-50. 

»  Ibid.  I.  328,  367  ;  II.  3,  282,  384. 

4  Goldwin  Smith.  "  On  the  Foundation  of  the  American  Colonies/'  26. 


226  HISTORY  OF  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

sake,"  said  William  Penn,  in  I682.1  "Our  business  here 
in  this  new  land,"  said  one  of  the  first  Pennsylvanians,  "  is 
not  so  much  to  build  houses,  and  establish  factories,  and 
promote  trade  and  manufactures  that  may  enrich  our- 
selves, ...  as  to  erect  temples  of  holiness  and  righteous- 
ness, which  God  may  delight  in ;  to  lay  such  lasting  foun- 
dations of  temperance  and  virtue,  as  may  support  the 
superstructures  of  our  future  happiness,  both  in  this  and 
the  other  world." 2 

The  society  that  these  men  founded  in  Pennsylvania 
was,  of  course,  serious,  laborious,  economic,  monotonous^ 
prim,  especially  pained  by  the  pleasures  of  existence. 
Thomas  Chalkley  abhorred  music  as  a  thing  "  of  evil  con- 
sequence ;  "  he  denounced  cards  "  as  engines  of  Satan  ;  " 
and  of  dancing  he  said,  that  "  as  many  paces  or  steps  as 
the  man  or  woman  takes  in  the  dance,  so  many  paces  or 
steps  they  take  toward  hell."8 

On  the  other  hand,  William  Penn  was  a  man  of  great 
intellectual  foresight,  and  swayed  by  a  passion  to  be 
both  just  and  humane ;  and  he  began  by  inoculating  his 
young  commonwealth  with  the  idea  of  civic  generosity : 
"  We  have,  with  reverence  to  God  and  good  conscience  to 
men,  to  the  best  of  our  skill  contrived  and  composed  the 
frame  of  this  government  to  the  great  end  of  all  govern- 
ment,— to  support  power  in  reverence  with  the  people, 
and  to  secure  the  people  from  the  abuse  of  power."* 
"Whoever  is  right,"  said  he,  "the  persecutor  must  be 
wrong."  6  From  the  beginning,  a  part  of  the  fundamental 
law  of  Pennsylvania  was  the  law  of  liberty  for  the  souls  of 
men.  Through  every  turnpike  in  that  province,  ideas 
travelled  toll-free. 

But  were  there,  in  that  province,  any  ideas  inclined  to 
travel  ?  The  founder  of  Quakerism,  being  himself  able  tor 

1  R.  Proud,  "  Hist.  Pa."  I.  210. 

s  Given  in  J.  W.  Leeds,  "  A  Hist.  U.  S."  212-213. 

•  T.  Chalkley,  Works,  4.  *  J.  Grahame,  "  Hist.  U.  S."  I.  506. 

•  W.  Heuworth  Dixon,  "Wm.  Penn,"  etc.  52. 


LITERATURE  IN  PENNSYLVANIA.  227 

get  all  necessary  wisdom  by  the  facility  of  an  inward 
flash,  quite  naturally  despised  those  who  had  to  get  it  by 
the  slow  process  of  study ;  he  despised  books,  also,  and 
schools ;  and  he  declared  that  "  God  stood  in  no  need  of 
human  learning."  l  William  Penn,  however,  and  many  of 
his  associates  in  the  settlement  of  Pennsylvania,  had  never 
yielded  to  that  barbaric  mood  of  their  religious  teacher; 
and  being  themselves  men  of  considerable  learning,3  they 
at  once  devised  means  for  the  spread  of  learning  among 
others.  "  Before  the  pines  had  been  cleared  from  the 
ground,"  they  "began  to  build  schools  and  set  up  a  print- 
ing-press." 8  It  was  their  noble  ambition,  "  inter  silvas 
quaerere  verum."  *  The  first  school  in  Pennsylvania  was 
founded  during  the  first  year  of  the  existence  of  Pennsyl- 
vania ;  and  in  the  sixth  year  of  its  existence,  there  was  in 
Philadelphia  an  academy  at  which  even  those  who  had  no 
money,  might  get  knowledge  without  price. 

The  first  impulse  to  the  production  of  any  sort  of  litera- 
ture in  Pennsylvania  was  given  by  a  desire  to  publish 
through  the  world  the  advantages  of  that  commonwealth. 
Very  soon,  the  fierceness  of  religious  controversy  set  other 
pens  to  work, — though  with  results  too  crude  and  too 
brutal  to  be  called  literature.  Science,  also,  and  the  slave- 
ry-question, and  the  Indian-question  prompted  others  to 
write.  Near  the  end  of  the  first  quarter  of  the  eighteenth 
century, — about  the  time  that  Benjamin  Franklin  com- 
menced his  career  there, — Philadelphia,  though  still  domi- 
nated by  the  Quakers,  had  become  the  seat  of  a  large 
population  who  were  not  Quakers ;  it  had  something  of 
the  liberal  tone  of  a  metropolis, — where  men  of  cultiva- 
tion, of  vivacity,  of  literary  aptitude,  had  begun  to  realize 

1  W.  Hepworth  Dixon,  "  Wm.  Penn,"  etc.  53. 

•Job  R.  Tyson,  "The  Social  and  Intellectual  State  of  the  Colony  of  Pa. 
prior  to  the  year  1743,"  46. 

*W.  Hepworth  Dixon,  "  Wm.  Penn,"  etc.  207. 

4  T.  I.  Wharton,  "  The  Prov.  Lit.  of  Pa.,"  in  Pa.  Hist.  Soc.  Mem.  I.  109. 


228  HIS  TOR  Y  OF  A  M ERICA  N  LITER  A  TURE. 

the  presence  of  one  another,  and  of  a  common  literary 
purpose.  By  the  close  of  the  colonial  age,  Philadelphia 
had  grown  to  be  the  centre  of  a  literary  activity  more 
vital  and  more  versatile  than  was  to  be  seen  anywhere 
else  upon  the  continent,  except  at  Boston.  In  the  ancient 
library  of  Philadelphia,  there  are  "four  hundred  and  twen- 
ty-five original  books  and  pamphlets  that  were  printed  in 
that  city  before  the  Revolution."  l 


II. 

In  1681,  in  the  first  ship  that  sailed  from  England  to  the 
great  American  province  of  William  Penn,  was  the  pleas- 
ant Quaker,  Gabriel  Thomas,  who,  for  the  next  seventeen 
years,  lent  a  strong  and  willing  hand  to  the  task  of  build- 
ing up  there  a  generous  drab  commonwealth  ;  and  who  re- 
turning  to  England  in  1698,  probably  for  a  brief  visit,  car- 
ried with  him  and  published  in  London,  in  that  year,  "An 
Historical  and  Geographical  Account  of  the  Province  and 
Country  of  Pennsylvania  and  of  West  New  Jersey."  The 
book,  which  is  written  with  Quaker-like  frankness  and  sim- 
plicity, and  with  an  undercurrent  of  playfulness  not  exactly 
Quaker-like,  is  full  of  information  for  the  guidance  of  the 
poor  in  the  old  world  to  a  good  refuge  in  the  new ;  and  in  the 
author's  opinion,  no  better  spot  could  be  found  anywhere 
along  the  vast  American  coast  than  that  happily  obtained 
by  William  Penn  :  "  For  though  this  country  has  made 
little  noise  in  story  or  taken  up  but  small  room  in  maps,  yet, 
.  .  .  the  mighty  improvements  .  .  .  that  have  been  made 
lately  there,  are  well  worth  communicating  to  the  public. 
.  .  .  This  noble  spot  of  earth  will  thrive  exceedingly."8 
"The  air  here  is  very  delicate,  pleasant,  and  wholesome; 
the  heavens  serene,  rarely  o'ercast,  bearing  mighty  resem- 
blance to  the  better  part  of  France." 3  In  delineating  the 

1  T.  I.  Wharton,  "  The  Prov.  Lit.  of  Pa."  124.  *  Preface. 

*  "  Account,"  etc.  7. 


GABRIEL    THOMAS,  22$ 

natural  characteristics  of  the  country,  he  passes  now  and 
then  into  a  semi-facetious  intensity,  into  a  droll  largeness 
of  statement,  from  which  even  the  demureness  of  his  sect 
did  not  save  him,  and  which  thus  early  show  themselves 
as  traits  of  American  humor ;  saying,  for  example,  that  the 
bullfrog  in  Pennsylvania  "  makes  a  roaring  noise  hardly  to 
be  distinguished  from  that  well  known  of  the  beast  from 
whom  it  takes  its  name." '  His  pictures  of  the  new  social 
conditions  formed  there,  have  elements  of  uncommon  at- 
tractiveness ;  as  when  he  remarks :  "  Of  lawyers  and  phy- 
sicians I  shall  say  nothing,  because  this  country  is  very 
peaceable  and  healthy.  Long  may  it  so  continue,  and 
never  have  occasion  for  the  tongue  of  the  one  nor  the  pen 
of  the  other,  both  equally  destructive  of  men's  estates  and 
lives."* 

Once  again,  also,  we  catch  in  this  book  the  tender  Amer- 
ican note  of  sympathy  with  men  and  women  in  Europe 
who  have  a  hard  lot  there ;  a  cheery  voice  from  this  side 
of  the  Atlantic  sounding  out  clear  above  the  countless 
laughter  of  its  billows,  and  telling  all  who  need  a  new 
chance  in  life  that  at  last  they  can  have  it :  "  Reader,  what 
I  have  here  written  is  not  a  fiction,  flam,  whim,  or  any 
sinister  design,  either  to  impose  upon  the  ignorant  or  cred- 
ulous, or  to  curry  favor  with  the  rich  and  mighty ;  but  in 
mere  pity  and  pure  compassion  to  the  numbers  of  poor 
laboring  men,  women,  and  children  in  England — half- 
starved  visible  in  their  meagre  looks — that  are  continually 
wandering  up  and  down,  looking  for  employment  without 
finding  any,  who  here  need  not  lie  idle  a  moment,  nor  want 
due  encouragement  or  reward  for  their  work,  much  less 
vagabond  or  drone  it  about.  Here  are  no  beggars  to  be 
seen,  .  .  .  nor,  indeed,  have  any  here  the  least  occasion  or 
temptation  to  take  up  that  scandalous  lazy  life."  * 

A  desire  to  bear  public  testimony  to  the  delights  and 
benefits  of  life  in  Pennsylvania,  took  possession  of  several 

1  "  Account,"  etc.  16.  •  Ibid.  32.  *  Ibid.  44-45- 


230  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

others  among  its  first  inhabitants;  and  unfortunately,  in 
some  cases,  this  testimony  sought  utterance  in  verse. 
Thus,  Richard  Frame,  probably  a  Quaker,  published  at 
Philadelphia,  in  1692,  "A  Short  Description  of  Pennsyl- 
vania; or,  A  relation  what  things  are  known,  enjoyed,  and 
like  to  be  discovered  in  the  said  province." l  So,  also, 
John  Holme,  who  came  to  Pennsylvania  in  1686,  and  died 
there  about  the  year  1701,  wrote  "A  True  Relation  of  the 
Flourishing  State  of  Pennsylvania."  ~  Both  of  these  works 
are  very  slight  as  specimens  of  descriptive  literature;  and 
as  examples  of  verse,  they  scarcely  rise  to  the  puerile — 
they  approach  the  idiotic. 

A  piece  of  narration  and  description,  happily  in  honest 
prose,  and  having  the  merit  of  being  uncommonly  interest- 
ing, is  "  God's  Protecting  Providence  Man's  surest  Help 
and  Defence  in  Times  of  greatest  Difficulty  and  most  em- 
inent Danger,"  by  Jonathan  Dickenson,  an  English  Quaker 
of  property  and  education,  who,  after  some  sojourn  in 
Jamaica,  sailed  thence,  in  1696,  for  Pennsylvania,  having 
with  him  his  wife,  an  infant  child,  and  several  negro  ser- 
vants. On  the  voyage,  they  were  cast  away  on  the  coast 
of  Florida,  and  after  suffering  almost  incredible  hardships, 
not  only  "  from  the  devouring  waves  of  the  sea"  but  "  also 
from  the  cruel,  devouring  jaws  of  the  inhumane  cannibals 
of  Florida,"  they  made  their  way  to  Philadelphia.  Of  this 
frightful  and  most  afflictive  experience,  Dickenson  wrote 
an  account,  under  the  title  already  given, — telling  his  story 
in  a  modest,  straight-forward,  manly  way,  like  a  hero  and 
a  Christian.  He  remained  in  Pennsylvania  the  rest  of  his 
life,  became  chief-justice  of  the  province,  and  died  there  in 

I/22.3 

1  Published  in  fac-simile  from  the  copy,  supposed  to  be  unique,  in  posses- 
sion of  the  Library  Company  of  Philadelphia,  1867. 

*  Printed  in  Pa.  Hist.  Soc.  Mem.  for  1848,  161-180. 

3  His  book  was  first  published,  in  Philadelphia,  in  1699  ;  it  was  reprinted 
in  London,  in  1700  ;  an  illustrated  edition  in  Dutch  was  published  at  Leyden, 
in  1710.  So  strong  and  clinging  is  the  human  interest  inspired  by  this 


JAMES  LOGAN. 


III. 

In  1699,  when  William  Penn  was  on  the  point  of  sailing 
for  the  second  time  to  his  province,  he  became  deeply  in- 
terested in  a  young  Irishman  of  Scottish  descent,  named 
James  Logan,  who,  though  highly  educated,  and  with 
strong  aptitudes  for  literary  and  scientific  pursuits,  had 
recently  embarked  in  trade  at  Bristol.  Penn  saw  in  this 
young  man  one  whom  he  could  safely  lean  upon,  and 
whom  he  greatly  needed ;  and  after  urgent  solicitation, 
Logan  gave  up  his  own  plans,  and  putting  his  fate  into 
Penn's  keeping,  went  with  him  to  America.  There  he  re- 
mained all  the  rest  of  his  days;  and  there  he  died  in  1751, 
at  the  age  of  seventy-seven. 

That  second  visit  of  William  Penn  to  Pennsylvania 
proved,  also,  to  be  his  last ;  and  when,  in  1701,  he  went 
on  board  the  ship  that  was  to  carry  him  away  from  the 
province  forever,  he  wrote  these  words  to  the  man  whom 
he  had  commissioned  to  stand  there  in  his  place :  "  I  have 
left  thee  in  an  uncommon  trust,  with  a  singular  depend- 
ence on  thy  justice  and  care,  which  I  expect  thou  wilt 
faithfully  employ  in  advancing  my  honest  interest.  .  .  . 
For  thy  own  services  I  shall  allow  thee  what  is  just  and 
reasonable.  .  .  .  Serve  me  faithfully  as  thou  expects  a 
blessing  from  God,  or  my  favor,  and  I  shall  support  thee 
to  my  utmost,  as  thy  true  friend."1  Thencefonvard,  James 
Logan's  letters  to  his  patron  and  to  his  patron's  family, 
are  the  letters  of  a  man  who  deserved  such  trust ;  for  he 
served  them  with  flawless  fidelity. 

His  office  proved  to  be  a  most  laborious  and  vexatious 
one.  Year  by  year  his  troubles  as  Penn's  agent  thickened. 
In  1704,  he  wrote  to  his  master:  "I  wish  thou  could  be 
here  thyself,  for  I  cannot  bear  up  under  all  these  hard- 
pathetic  book,  that  even  so  late  as  1803  it  was  reprinted  in  English,  probably 
for  the  sixth  time. 

1  Pa.  Hist.  Soc.  Mem.  IX.  59-61. 


232  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

ships ;  they  break  my  rest,  and  I  doubt  will  sink  me  at 
last.  ...  I  have  been  so  true  to  thee,  that  I  am  not  just 
to  myself ;  and  had  I  now  a  family,  it  would  appear  that 
there  has  scarce  been  a  greater  knave  in  America  ta 
another's  affairs,  than  I  have  been  to  my  own." : 

But  though  James  Logan  was  through  all  his  life  thus 
faithful  to  the  proprietors  of  Pennsylvania,  he  was  never 
unfaithful  to  the  people  of  Pennsylvania.  He  held  in  suc- 
cession the  leading  offices  in  the  province;  from  1736  to 
1738,  as  president  of  the  council,  he  was  really  governor; 
and  while,  at  times,  he  drew  upon  himself  great  unpopu- 
larity, he  served  the  people  better  than  they  knew,  in  all 
their  highest  interests,  in  peace  and  even  in  war. 

His  long  life  and  his  great  influence  went  especially 
for  the  public  enlightenment ;  and  in  all  possible  ways 
he  helped  to  build  up  good  literature  in  Pennsylvania. 
His  own  intellectual  accomplishments  were  extraordinary. 
Almost  from  childhood  he  had  been  familiar  with  the 
principal  languages,  ancient  and  modern  ;  at  the  age  of 
sixteen  he  began  that  enthusiastic  study  of  the  higher 
mathematics  which  he  prosecuted  all  his  life ;  and  there 
seemed  to  be  no  topic  in  science  or  literature  that  did  not 
have  his  attention.  He  carried  on  an  extensive  corre- 
spondence with  the  most  illustrious  scholars  in  Europe  and 
America ;  and  in  these  letters  as  well  as  in  the  mass  of 
private  papers  that  he  left  behind  him,  he  discussed,  with 
originality  and  precision,  the  leading  subjects  that  then 
engaged  the  minds  of  learned  men.  "  Sometimes  Hebrew 
or  Arabic  characters  and  algebraic  formulas  roughen  the 
pages  of  his  letter-books.  Sometimes  his  letters  convey  a 
lively  Greek  ode  to  a  learned  friend  ;  and  often  they  are 
written  in  the  Latin  tongue."2 

The  larger  part  of  his  writings  still  remain  unprinted ; 

1  Pa.  Hist.  Soc.  Mem.  IX.  325. 

3  J.  F.  Fisher,  in  Sparks's  ed.  of  Works  of  Franklin,  VII.  24-27,  note.  For 
my  account  of  the  unpublished  writings  of  Logan,  I  depend  chiefly  on  J.  F 
Fisher,  as  above  ;  and  on  J.  F.  Watson,  "  Annals  of  Phila."  I.  523-526. 


WILLIAM  SMITH, 


233 


but  during  his  lifetime  were  published,  besides  several 
Latin  treatises  by  him  upon  scientific  subjects,  his  "  Trans- 
lation of  Cato's  Distichs  into  English  Verse,"  and  his  more 
celebrated  translation  of  "  M.  T.  Cicero's  Cato  Major;  or, 
Discourse  on  Old  Age," — works  that  not  only  denoted  his 
own  elegant  literary  taste,  but  also  tended  to  develop 
such  taste  in  others.  His  correspondence  with  the  Penn 
family,  from  1700  to  1750,  has  been  recently  made  public  ; l 
and  though  much  of  it  is  taken  up  with  uninteresting 
details  respecting  business  and  politics,  it  is  also  a  great 
storehouse  of  information  respecting  men  and  manners  in 
Pennsylvania  during  that  period.  Everywhere  this  cor- 
respondence reveals  the  carefulness  and  the  intellectual 
breadth  of  James  Logan  ;  and  occasionally  one  finds  in  it 
a  passage  of  general  discussion,  in  which  the  clear  brain 
and  the  noble  heart  of  the  writer  utter  themselves  in  lan- 
guage of  real  beauty  and  force.1 


IV. 

In  1751,  the  very  year  in  which  James  Logan  died,  there 
came  to  America  another  man  of  the  same  Scottish  stock, 
and  of  the  same  Scottish  vigor  for  various  intellectual 
work,  who,  in  the  middle  colonies,  and  especially  in  Penn- 
sylvania, was  to  carry  forward,  during  the  second  half  of 
the  eighteenth  century,  many  of  the  wholesome  scientific 
and  literary  influences  with  which  the  life  of  James  Logan 
had  been  identified,  during  the  first  half  of  that  century. 
This  man  was  William  Smith,  born  at  Aberdeen  about 
1726,  and  graduated  at  its  university  in  1747.  In  New 
York,  where  he  spent  the  first  two  years  after  his  arrival 
in  America,  he  found  the  leading  men  greatly  occupied 
with  the  project  of  founding  a  college  there  ;  and  in  the 
discussion  of  this  subject  he  skilfully  participated  by  pub- 
lishing "A  General  Idea  of  the  College  of  Mirania,"  a 

1  Pa.  Hist.  Soc.  Mem.  IX-X.  «  For  example,  ibid.  IX.  226-»«9- 


234 


HISTORY  OF  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 


sort  of  educational  romance,  written  in  graceful  style,  and 
unfolding  with  much  vigor  the  author's  notions  of  what  a 
college  in  America  should  be. 

A  copy  of  the  book  soon  fell  under  the  eye  of  Benjamin 
Franklin,  who  was,  at  that  time,  also  deeply  engaged  in 
plans  for  a  college  at  Philadelphia;  and  was  even  then 
looking  about  for  some  one  competent  to  take  charge  of 
it.  Not  long  afterward,  the  ambitious  young  Scotchman 
was  invited  to  Philadelphia  for  that  purpose.  He  im- 
mediately went  to  England  for  holy  orders  ;  and  returning 
to  Philadelphia  in  1754,  he  entered  upon  his  duties  at  the 
head  of  the  institution  which,  in  the  following  year,  took 
the  name  of  a  college.  From  that  time  onward  until  his 
death  in  1803,  William  Smith,  as  educator,  politician, 
clergyman,  and  man  of  letters,  was  a  tireless,  facile,  and 
powerful  representative  in  Philadelphia  of  the  higher  intel- 
lectual interests  of  society.  Under  his  care  the  little  col- 
lege grew  apace  ;  and  by  his  own  example  as  an  eloquent 
writer,  by  his  enthusiasm  for  good  literature,  and  by  his 
quick  and  genial  recognition  of  literary  merit  in  the  young 
men  who  were  growing  up  around  him,  he  did  a  great 
work  for  the  literary  development  of  his  adopted  country.1 


V. 

We  find  in  Pennsylvania,  during  the  first  sixty  years  of 
the  eighteenth  century,  a  succession  of  persons  swayed 
somewhat  by  literary  inclinations,  and  addicted,  in  a  small 
and  rather  amateur  way,  to  literary  utterance,  in  prose  or 
rhyme. 

One  of  these  persons  was  Jacob  Taylor,  who  served 
the  public  in  the  various  capacities  of  school-master,  sur- 
veyor, doctor,  almanac-maker,  and  poet.  His  verses  usually 


1  His  most  important  writings  in  our  present  period  were  published  in  a 
volume  entitled  "  Discourses  on  Public  Occasions  in  America,"  2d  ed.  Lon- 
don, 1762. 


AQUILA   ROSE.  33$ 

appeared  in  his  almanacs ;  and  it  is  said  !  that,  "  in  har- 
mony  and  spirit,"  some  of  them  "  nearly  approached  to  the 
poetry  of  standard  authors."  One  of  his  poems  is  entitled 
"  Pennsylvania  ;  "  another,  "  The  Story  of  Whackum," 
being  a  satire  on  country  quacks.  He  died  in  1736. 

A  man  of  considerable  sprightliness  and  social  grace 
was  Henry  Brooke,  younger  son  of  Sir  Henry  Brooke  of 
Cheshire,  for  some  time  collector  of  customs  in  Pennsyl- 
vania, and  during  many  years  a  leading  politician  in  the 
province.  In  1704,  James  Logan,  in  a  letter  to  William 
Penn,  described  him  as  "  a  young  man  of  the  most  polite 
education  and  best  natural  parts  .  .  .  thrown  away  on 
this  corner  of  the  world."1  His  gift  as  a  writer  of  smooth 
and  spirited  verse  may  be  seen  in  a  little  poem  of  his 
addressed  to  Robert  Grade,  and  entitled  "  A  Discourse  of 
Jests."' 

Many  of  these  small  writers  would  have  found  long 
since  the  repose  in  utter  oblivion  to  which  they  have  so 
valid  a  claim,  had  it  not  been  for  such  incidental  mention 
as  is  made  of  them  by  Franklin,  in  his  "  Autobiography." 
Thus,  he  records  that,  on  his  first  arrival  in  Philadelphia  as 
a  runaway  apprentice,  he  sought  employment  in  the  print- 
ing-office of  one  Samuel  Keimer,  a  long-bearded,  semi-lit- 
erary, very  mystical,  and  altogether  preposterous  adven- 
turer, whom  he  found  engaged  in  putting  into  type  an 
elegy  composed  by  the  printer  himself,  on  one  Aquila 
Rose,  also  a  printer  and  poet,  who  had  but  recently  died. 
The  latter  was  of  English  birth  and  education  ;  and  after 
his  death,  at  the  age  of  twenty-eight,  "  many  of  his  best 
pieces  "  were  loaned  by  his  widow  to  her  friends,  and  in 
consequence  were  lost ;  but  in  1741,  such  of  his  verses  as 
could  then  be  obtained  were  collected  by  his  son,  Joseph 
Rose,  and  published  in  a  pamphlet,  under  the  title  of 
"  Poems  on  Several  Occasions." 

1  By  J.  F.  Fisher,  "  Early  Poets  and  Poetry  of  Pa."  67. 

*  Pa.  Hist.  Soc.  Mem.  IX.  311. 

1  A  fragment  of  it  is  in  R.  W.  Griswold's  "  Poets  and  Poetry  of  Am."  22. 


236  HISTORY  OF  AMERICAN  LITER  A  TURE. 

James  Ralph,  probably  born  in  America  and  near  the 
beginning  of  the  eighteenth  century,  was  another  of  that 
group  of  witlings  and  poetasters  whose  names  are  strung 
like  glass  beads  upon  the  thread  of  Franklin's  story  of  his 
own  early  career  in  Philadelphia.  At  the  time  of  Frank- 
lin's first  appearance  upon  the  scene,  Ralph  was  a  young 
fellow  of  fine  appearance,  glib  tongue,  poetic  aspirations, 
and  superficial  accomplishments.  In  1724,  he  resolved 
to  give  the  British  metropolis  the  benefit  of  his  talents. 
Being  then  encumbered  with  a  wife  and  a  young  child,  but 
not  with  a  conscience,  he  quietly  abandoned  the  former, 
and  with  Franklin  for  a  companion,  went  to  London  as  a 
literary  adventurer,  where,  with  sharp  alternations  of  pov- 
erty and  prosperity,  he  remained  the  rest  of  his  life,  a  pro- 
lific and  notorious  literary  hack;  emitting  with  incontinent 
speed  political  pamphlets,  newspaper  articles,  odes,  epics, 
plays,  satires,  and  histories ;  achieving  the  ludicrous  im- 
mortality of  a  niche  in  Pope's  pantheon  of  dunces;1  and 
honored  long  after  his  death  by  the  strong  applause  of 
Charles  James  Fox.2  From  the  moment  of  his  first  arrival 
in  London,  however,  Ralph  succeeded  so  perfectly  in  cast- 
ing off  all  topics  that  were  connected  with  his  native  coun- 
try and  in  taking  on  all  those  themes  and  modes  that 
were  peculiar  to  a  London  Bohemian,  that  his  remarkable 
career  as  a  writer  seems  to  have  no  significance  in  relation 
to  American  literature.  We  cordially  surrender  him,  there- 
fore, to  the  exclusive  possession  of  our  English  kinsmen. 

On  Franklin's  return  from  the  expedition  that  he  had 
made  to  London  in  the  company  of  James  Ralph,  he  found 
in  Keimer's  printing-office,  "  in  the  situation  of  a  bought 
servant,"  one  George  Webb,  "  an  Oxford  scholar,"  and  a 
native  of  Gloucester,  England,  who,  having  run  away  from 
college  and  fallen  into  distress  in  London,  had  obtained 
passage  to  Philadelphia  on  condition  of  doing  four  years' 


1  "  The  Dunciad,"  Book  III.  164-165. 

*  See  Allibone's  "  Diet,  of  Authors,"  II.  1731. 


GEORGE    WEBB. 


237 


service  after  his  arrival  there.  "He  was  lively,  witty, 
good-natured,  and  a  pleasant  companion,  but  idle,  thought- 
less, and  imprudent  to  the  last  degree."1  He  had  a  smat- 
tering of  knowledge  and  some  cleverness  at  verse-making; 
and  having  made  his  way  into  respectable  society,  he  ap- 
pears to  have  attracted  considerable  local  attention  by  the 
merry  little  poems  that  he  dashed  off  frequently  enough. 
One  of  these  is  a  poem  of  about  a  hundred  lines,  published 
by  Franklin  in  1736,  and  entitled  "  Bachelors'  Hall."  The 
name  of  the  poem  was  that  of  a  famous  club-house  built  in 
the  fields  in  Kensington  by  a  set  of  Philadelphia  bachelors, 
and  long  held  in  ill  repute  as  the  supposed  seat  of  glutton- 
ous and  lascivious  revels.1  Webb's  poem  was  an  effort  to 
placate  public  opinion,  on  behalf  of  the  offending  edifice- 

"  Say,  goddess,  tell  me, — for  to  thee  is  known 
What  is,  what  was,  and  what  shall  e'er  be  done. 
Why  stands  this  dome  erected  on  the  plain  ? 
For  pleasure  was  it  built,  or  else  for  gain  ? 
For  midnight  revels  was  it  ever  thought  ? 
Shall  impious  doctrines  ever  here  be  taught  ? 
Or  else  for  nobler  purposes  designed, 
To  cheer  and  cultivate  the  mind, 
With  mutual  love  each  glowing  breast  inspire, 
Or  cherish  friendship's  now  degenerate  fire  ? 


Tired  with  the  business  of  the  noisy  town, 
The  weary  bachelors  their  cares  disown; 
For  this  loved  seat  they  all  at  once  prepare, 
And  long  to  breathe  the  sweets  of  country-air. 

Tis  not  a  revel  or  lascivious  night 

That  to  this  hall  the  bachelors  invite  ; 

Much  less  shall  impious  doctrines  here  be  taught. 

Blush,  ye  accusers,  at  the  very  thought ! 

For  other,  oh,  for  other  ends  designed, 

To  mend  the  heart  and  cultivate  the  mind. 


1  "  Life  of  Franklin,"  etc.,  e<L  by  John  Bigelow,  I.  171-173. 
*  J.  F.  Watson,  "Annals  of  Phila."  I.  432-433- 


338  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

Mysterious  nature  here  unveiled  shall  be, 
And  knotty  points  of  deep  philosophy. 

But  yet  sometimes  the  all-inspiring  bowl 

To  laughter  shall  provoke  and  cheer  the  soul ; 

The  jocund  tale  to  humor  shall  invite, 

And  dedicate  to  wit  a  jovial  night : 

Not  the  false  wit  the  cheated  world  admires, 

The  mirth  of  sailors,  nor  of  country  squires  ; 

Nor  the  gay  punster's,  whose  quick  sense  affords 

Naught  but  a  miserable  play  on  words  ; 

Nor  the  grave  quidnunc's,  whose  enquiring  head 

With  musty  scraps  of  journals  must  be  fed; 

But  condescending,  genuine,  apt,  and  fit ; 

Good  nature  is  the  parent  of  true  wit. 

Then,  music,  too,  shall  cheer  this  fair  abode — 
Music,  the  sweetest  of  the  gifts  of  God  ; 
Music,  the  language  of  propitious  love  ; 
Music,  that  things  inanimate  can  move. 

Ye  winds  be  hushed,  let  no  presumptuous  breeze 

Now  dare  to  whistle  through  the  rustling  trees; 

Thou,  Delaware,  awhile  forget  to  roar, 

Nor  dash  thy  foaming  surge  against  the  shore ; 

Be  thy  green  nymphs  upon  thy  surface  found, 

And  let  thy  stagnant  waves  confess  the  sound ; 

Let  thy  attentive  fishes  all  be  nigh, — 

For  fishes  were  always  friends  to  harmony; 

Witness  the  dolphin  which  Arion  bore, 

And  landed  safely  on  his  native  shore. 

Let  doting  cynics  snarl  ;  let  noisy  zeal 

Tax  this  design  with  act  or  thought  of  ill ; 

Let  narrow  souls  their  rigid  morals  boast, 

Till  in  the  shadowy  name  the  virtue's  lost; 

Let  envy  strive  their  character  to  blast, 

And  fools  despise  the  sweets  they  cannot  taste, — 

This  certain  truth  let  the  inquirer  know  : 

It  did  from  good  and  generous  motives  flow."1 

1  I  cite  these  lines  from  a  reprint  of  the  poem  in  Thompson  Westcott'i 
"  History  of  Philadelphia,"  published  in  serial  form  in  the  "  Sunday  De- 
spatch "  of  that  city. 


POEM  IN   TITAN'S  ALMANAC 


239 


At  least  one  more  of  Franklin's  early  literary  compan- 
ions must  be  named  by  us, — Joseph  Breintnal,  "a  copyer 
of  deeds  for  the  scriveners,  a  good-natured,  friendly,  mid- 
dle-aged man,  a  great  lover  of  poetry,  reading  all  he  could 
meet  with,  and  writing  some  that  was  tolerable,  very  in- 
genious in  many  little  knickknackeries,  and  of  sensible  con- 
versation." l  When  Franklin  undertook  to  write  for  a 
weekly  newspaper,  a  series  of  didactic  and  satirical  essays 
called  "  The  Busy  Body,"  he  was  assisted  in  the  work  by 
the  friendly  pen  of  Breintnal,  who,  in  fact,  continued  the 
series  for  several  months  after  Franklin  had  ceased  to  take 
an  interest  in  it.1 

In  "Titan's  Almanac"  for  1730  is  an  anonymous  poem 
in  praise  of  Pennsylvania,  which  may  interest  us  still,  not 
only  as  a  token  of  the  ordinary  poetic  manner  of  that  time 
and  place,  but  especially  for  its  reference  to  the  literary 
preeminence  then  attained,  or  confidently  expected,  on 
the  part  of  Philadelphia : 

"  Stretched  on  the  bank  of  Delaware's  rapid  stream, 
Stands  Philadelphia,  not  unknown  to  fame. 
Here  the  tall  vessels  safe  at  anchor  ride, 
And  Europe's  wealth  flows  in  with  every  tide. 

Tis  here  Apollo  does  erect  his  throne  ; 
This  his  Parnassus,  this  his  Helicon. 
Here  solid  sense  does  every  bosom  warm  ; 
Here  noise  and  nonsense  have  forgot  to  charm. 
Thy  seers  how  cautious,  and  how  gravely  wise  ! 
Thy  hopeful  youth  in  emulation  rise  ; 
Who,  if  the  wishing  muse  inspired  does  sing, 
Shall  liberal  arts  to  such  perfection  bring, 
Europe  shall  mourn  her  ancient  fame  declined, 
And  Philadelphia  be  the  Athens  of  mankind."1 

1  "  Life  of  Franklin,"  etc.  ed.  by  John  Bigelow,  I.  183. 

*  They  appeared  in  "The  Weekly  Gazette,"  beginning  with  February  4, 
l?2q.  It  is  supposed  that  Breintnal  wrote  nearly  all  after  the  eighth  essay; 
possibly,  also,  the  sixth  and  seventh. 

1  I  cite  these  lines  from  the  poem  as  reprinted  in  "  The  Hist  Magazine," 
»V.  344- 


240  HISTOR  y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

A  daintier  poetic  skill  was  reached  by  a  later  poe* 
Philadelphia,  Joseph  Shippen,  who  wrote  so  well  that 
his  case  we  experience  the  unwonted   regret  that  he  d 
not  write  more.     His  most  famous  poem  is  a  love-song 
"  The  Glooms  of  Ligonier,"  published  in  1759,  and  popular 
for  many  years  afterward.1     He  also  wrote   some  graceful 
verses  on  seeing  a  portrait,  painted  by  Benjamin  West,  of 
a  beautiful  young  lady.    In  this  poem,  having  first  extolled 
the  exquisite  charm  of  the  portrait  itself,  he  is  upon  the 
point  of  charging  the  artist  with  an  exaggeration  of  the 
beauty  of  the  original : 

"Yet,  sure,  his  flattering  pencil's  unsincere  ; 

His  fancy  takes  the  place  of  bashful  truth  ; 
And  warm  imagination  pictures  here 

The  pride  of  beauty  and  the  bloom  of  youth. 

Thus  had  I  said,  and  thus,  deluded,  thought, 
Had  lovely  Stella  still  remained  unseen, 

Whose  grace  and  beauty,  to  perfection  brought, 
Make  every  imitative  art  look  mean."  ? 

About  the  year  1741,  John  Webbe  published  in  Phila- 
delphia the  first  of  an  intended  series  of  tracts,  on  the 
financial  questions  that  agitated  the  American  colonies 
during  many  war-making  and  wasteful  years.  He  entitled 
his  essay,  "  A  Discourse  concerning  Paper-money."  The 
style  is  compact  and  clear ;  but  the  literary  merit  of  the 
production  is  unimportant  by  comparison  with  the  argu- 
mentative feat  that  the  author  professes  to  have  accom- 
plished in  it,  namely,  the  demonstration  of  "  a  method, 
plain  and  easy,  for  introducing  and  continuing  a  plen- 
ty "  of  paper-money,  "  without  lessening  the  present  value 
of  it." 

In  1755,  Lewis  Evans,  a  surveyor  in  Pennsylvania,  in 
order  to  help  the  public  to  understand  the  bearings  of 
the  strife,  then  waxing  hot,  between  the  English  and 

1  R.  W.  Griswold,  "  Poets  and  Poetry  of  America,"  24.  '  Ibid.  24. 


SAMUEL  DA  VIES.  241 

}  French  for  possession  of  the  American  continent,  pub- 
;hed  "A  General  Map  of  the  Middle  British  Colonies  in 
America;"  and,  at  the  same  time,  an  "Analysis"1  of  the 
Tiap,  in  the  form  of  a  descriptive  and  argumentative  es- 
say, written  with  fulness  of  knowledge,  and  rising,  toward 
the  end,  to  a  statesmanly  view  of  the  whole  problem  then 
coming  to  a  solution  by  the  two  races. 


VI. 

Probably  the  most  brilliant  pulpit-orator  produced  in 
the  colonial  time,  south  of  New  England,  was  Samuel 
Davies,  born  in  Newcastle  County,  Delaware,  in  1723. 
His  classical  education  was  obtained  chiefly  at  the  famous 
school  founded  by  Samuel  Blair,  at  Fogg's  Manor,  in  Ches- 
ter County ;  and  there,  also,  he  pursued  the  study  of  the- 
ology. He  began  to  preach  in  1746;  and  in  the  follow- 
ing year,  he  visited  Virginia,  where  his  earnestness,  his 
imaginative  rhetoric,  and  his  impassioned  elocution  won 
for  him  a  sudden  and  extensive  popularity.  In  1748,  he 
accepted  an  invitation  to  settle  in  that  colony;  and  during 
the  subsequent  five  years,  what  before  was  popularity 
deepened  into  fame  and  a  most  benign  influence,  and  filled 
the  whole  country.  In  1753,  in  the  company  of  Gilbert 
Tennent,  he  went  to  England  to  solicit  aid  for  the  College 
of  New  Jersey.  He  remained  there  about  eleven  months, 
having  great  success  in  his  mission,  and  winning  for  him- 
self high  reputation  as  an  orator.  On  his  return,  he  re- 
sumed his  labors  in  Virginia.  In  1759,  he  succeeded 
Jonathan  Edwards  as  president  of  the  College  of  New 
Jersey ;  and  upon  him  there  fell  the  fate  of  speedy  death, 
which,  for  a  time,  seemed  to  be  the  inevitable  portion  of 
those  who  should  accept  that  office.  He  died  in  1761. 

During  his  life,  many  of  his  sermons  were  published, 
and  were  widely  diffused.     One  of  them,  preached  in  Vir- 

1  A  second  ed.  was  published  in  the  same  year. 
VOL.   n.— 16 


242 


HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITER  A  TURE. 


ginia,  in  1755,  shortly  after  the  defeat  of  General  Brad- 
dock,  is  remarkable  for  its  prophetic  allusion  to  the  des- 
tiny of  George  Washington :  "  I  may  point  out  to  the 
public  that  heroic  youth,  Colonel  Washington,  whom  I 
cannot  but  hope  Providence  has  hitherto  preserved  in  so 
signal  a  manner,  for  some  important  service  to  his  coun- 
try."1 Not  long  after  his  death,  a  collection  of  his  ser- 
mons was  published  in  three  large  volumes;  and  these 
have  been  repeatedly  printed  since  that  time.2 

A  glance  at  any  page  of  these  discourses  reveals  the 
fact  that  the  author  of  them  was,  above  all  other  things, 
an  orator.  He  prepared  his  sermons  with  the  utmost 
care  ;  for  he  "  always  thought  it  to  be  a  most  awful  thing 
to  go  into  the  pulpit  and  there  speak  nonsense  in  the 
name  of  God."  What  he  prepared,  however,  was  meant 
for  the  ear  rather  than  for  the  eye.  He  had  all  the  physical 
qualifications  for  oratory — voice,  gesture,  temperament ; 
and  in  appearance  he  was  so  commanding  that  "  he  looked 
like  the  ambassador  of  some  great  king."  As  uttered  by 
himself,  these  discourses  must  have  been  vivid  and  thrill- 
ing orations  ;  but  they  suffer  from  the  revelations  of  type. 
The  thought  is  often  loose ;  the  imagery  is  sometimes 
confused ;  the  sentences  are  frequently  swollen  into  ver- 
bosity. 

As  we  read,  however,  some  of  his  eloquent  sentences, — 
for  example,  these  from  his  sermon  on  "  The  General 
Resurrection," — we  may  easily  imagine  ourselves  in  the! 
presence  of  the  orator  himself,  and  borne  away  beyond' 
criticism,  on  the  tide  of  his  heroic  faith  and  his  passionate 
declamation :  "  They  shall  come  forth.  Now  methinks  I 
see,  I  hear,  the  earth  heaving,  charnel-houses  rattling, 
tombs  bursting,  graves  opening.  Now  the  nations  under 
ground  begin  to  stir.  There  is  a  noise  and  a  shaking 


1  "  Sermons"  of  S.  Davies,  ed.  by  W.  B.  Sprague,  III.  101,  note. 
9  One  ed.  is  by  Albert  Barnes,  N.  Y.  1841  ;   another  by  W.  B.  Sprague, 
Phila.  1864. 


SAMUEL  DA  VIES. 


243 


among  the  dry  bones.  The  dust  is  all  alive,  and  in  motion, 
and  the  globe  breaks  and  trembles,  as  with  an  earthquake, 
while  this  vast  army  is  working  its  way  through  and  burst- 
ing into  life.  The  ruins  of  human  bodies  are  scattered 
far  and  wide,  and  have  passed  through  many  and  surpris- 
ing transformations.  A  limb  in  one  country,  and  another 
in  another ;  here  the  head  and  there  the  trunk,  and  the 
ocean  rolling  between.  Multitudes  have  sunk  in  a  watery 
grave,  been  swallowed  up  by  the  monsters  of  the  deep, 
and  transformed  into  a  part  of  their  flesh.  Multitudes 
have  been  eaten  by  beasts  and  birds  of  prey,  and  incor- 
porated with  them  ;  and  some  have  been  devoured  by 
their  fellow-men  in  the  rage  of  a  desperate  hunger,  or  of 
unnatural  cannibal  appetite,  and  digested  into  a  part  of 
them.  Multitudes  have  mouldered  into  dust,  and  this 
dust  has  been  blown  about  by  winds,  and  washed  away 
with  water,  or  it  has  petrified  into  stone,  or  been  burnt 
into  brick  to  form  dwellings  for  their  posterity ;  or  it  has 
grown  up  in  grain,  trees,  plants,  and  other  vegetables, 
which  are  the  support  of  man  and  beast,  and  are  trans- 
formed into  their  flesh  and  blood.  But  through  all  these 
various  transformations  and  changes,  not  a  particle  that 
was  essential  to  one  human  body  has  been  lost,  or  incor- 
porated with  another  human  body,  so  as  to  become  an 
essential  part  of  it.  ...  The  omniscient  God  knows  how 
to  collect,  distinguish,  and  compound  all  those  scattered 
and  mingled  seeds  of  our  mortal  bodies.  And  now,  at  the 
sound  of  the  trumpet,  they  shall  all  be  collected,  wherever 
they  were  scattered  ;  all  properly  sorted  and  united,  how- 
ever they  were  confused  ;  atom  to  its  fellow-atom,  bone  to 
its  fellow-bone.  Now  methinks  you  may  see  the  air  dark- 
ened with  fragments  of  bodies  flying  from  country  to  coun- 
try to  meet  and  join  their  proper  parts.  .  .  .  Then,  my 
brethren,  your  dust  and  mine  shall  be  reanimated  and 
organized.  .  .  .  And  what  a  vast  improvement  will  the 
.frail  nature  of  man  then  receive  ?  Our  bodies  will  then  be 
substantially  the  same ;  but  how  different  in  qualities,  in 


244  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TVRE. 

strength,  in  agility,  in  capacities  for  pleasure  or  pain,  in 
beauty  or  deformity,  in  glory  or  terror,  according  to  the 
moral  character  of  the  person  to  whom  they  belong!  .  .  . 
The  bodies  of  the  saints  will  be  formed  glorious,  incor- 
ruptible, without  the  seeds  of  sickness   and  death.  .  .  . 
Then  will  the  body  be  able  to  bear  up  under  the  exceed- 
ing great  and  eternal  weight  of  glory ;  it  will  no  longer  be 
a  clog  or  an  incumbrance  to  the  soul,  but  a  proper  instru- 
ment and  assistant  in  all  the  exalted  services  and  enjoy- 
ments of  the  heavenly  state.     The  bodies  of  the  wicked 
will  also  be  improved,  but  their  improvements  will  all  be 
terrible  and  vindictive.    Their  capacities  will  be  thoroughly 
enlarged,  but  then  it  will  be  that  they  may  be  made  capa- 
ble of  greater  misery ;  they  will  be  strengthened,  but  it 
will  be  that  they  may  bear  the  heavier  load  of  torment. 
Their  sensations  will  be  more  quick  and  strong,  but  it  will 
be  that  they  may  feel  the  more  exquisite  pain.     They  will 
be  raised   immortal  that  they  may  not  be  consumed  by 
everlasting  fire,  or  escape  punishment  by  dissolution  or 
annihilation.     In   short,  their  augmented  strength,  their 
enlarged   capacities,  and  their  immortality,  will  be  their 
eternal  curse  ;  and  they  would  willingly  exchange  them 
for  the  fleeting  duration  of  a  fading  flower,  or  the  faint 
sensations  of  an  infant.     The  only  power  they  would  re- 
joice in  is  that  of  self-annihilation.' 

VII. 

Upon  the  fascinating  pages  of  Franklin's  "  Autobiog- 
raphy," one  meets  several  times  the  name  of  an  ingen- 
ious and  philosophical  glazier  of  Philadelphia,  namec 
Thomas  Godfrey.  It  was  this  glazier  and  his  family,  who, 
upon  Franklin's  return  to  Philadelphia  after  his  first  pil- 
grimage to  London,  shared  with  the  economical  young 
printer  the  space  and  the  expense  of  his  hired  house 

:  -  Sermons"  of  S.  Davies,  ed.  by  W.  B.  Sprague,  I.  498-502. 


THOMAS  GODFREY. 


245 


"  near  the  market ; "  it  was  the  wife  of  this  glazier,  who, 
with  much  feminine  diplomacy,  tried  to  make  a  match 
between  Franklin  and  one  of  her  own  relations,  and  was 
so  offended  at  Franklin's  intractableness  in  the  affair,  that 
she  and  her  family  removed  from  his  house ;  again,  it  was 
the  glazier  himself  who,  in  1744,  was  enrolled  as  "  a  math- 
ematician "  among  the  nine  original  members  of  the  Ameri- 
can Philosophical  Society.1 

Among  the  children  of  this  astute  and  worthy  man, 
was  a  son,  likewise  named  Thomas,  who  left  such  proofs 
of  poetic  genius,  that  his  name  will  always  have  a  promi- 
nent place  in  the  story  of  our  colonial  literature.  The 
expression  of  his  genius,  however,  was  inadequate;  for 
he  had  the  three  misfortunes — stinted  education,  pov- 
erty, an  early  death.  He  was  born  at  Philadelphia,  in 
1736.  Being  left  an  orphan  at  the  age  of  thirteen,  he  was 
soon  taken  from  school  and  apprenticed  to  a  watch-maker 
— a  trade  that  he  did  not  like.  His  heart  was  in  music, 
and  especially  in  poetry ;  and  to  these  he  gave  whatever 
time  he  could  purloin  from  the  business  that  was  to  him  a 
servitude.  In  1758,  having  reached  his  majority,  he  be- 
came a  lieutenant  in  the  Pennsylvania  militia  and  served 
through  the  campaign  that  resulted  that  year  in  the  cap- 
ture by  the  English  of  Fort  Duquesne.  In  1759,  he  went 
to  North  Carolina,  and  remained  there  under  engagement 
as  a  factor  for  three  years.  At  the  end  of  that  time,  being 
still  unsettled,  he  made  journeys  to  Philadelphia  and  to 
New  Providence;  then  returned  to  North  Carolina;  and 
there,  on  the  third  of  August,  1763,  he  suddenly  died. 
Two  years  after  his  death,  his  writings,  collected  and  edited 
by  another  young  poet,  Nathaniel  Evans,  were  published 
at  Philadelphia  under  this  title :  "  Juvenile  Poems  on  Va- 
rious Subjects  ;  with  the  Prince  of  Parthia,  a  Tragedy." 

The  poems  called  "juvenile,"  doubtless  deserve  that 
term.  They  have  no  original  manner  or  matter  ;  they  are 

1  "  Life  of  Franklin,"  etc.  ed.  by  John  Bigelow,  I.  181,  204,  276. 


246  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

merely  tentative  and  preparatory ;  those  of  them  that  failed 
to  receive  correction  from  his  scholarly  friends,  reveal,  in 
their  imperfect  metre,  false  accent,  and  false  syntax,  his 
own  lack  of  scholarship.  The  topics  are  the  usual  ones  in 
the  case  of  poetic  fledglings  :  "  A  Cure  for  Love ;  "  "  Ode 
on  Friendship  ; "  "A  Dithyrambic  on  Wine."  There  are 
also  some  pastorals,  and  as  many  as  seven  or  eight  love- 
songs  ;  and  besides  these,  an  ambitious  and  not  discredita- 
ble poem  in  pentameter  couplets,  entitled  "  The  Court  of 
Fancy,"  obviously  suggested  by  Chaucer  and  Pope. 

These  alone  would  not  have  gained  for  Thomas  Godfrey 
any  remembrance.  There  is  in  the  volume,  however,  a 
tragedy — the  first  drama,  probably,  ever  produced  in  this 
country — that  has  very  considerable  merit,  and  assures  us 
of  the  presence  in  him  of  a  constructive  genius  in  poetry 
from  which,  very  likely,  great  things  would  have  come,  had 
the  stars  befriended  him. 

This  poem  is  in  blank  verse.  It  is  an  oriental  story  of 
love  and  lust,  of  despotism,  ambition,  and  jealousy.  A 
certain  king  of  Parthia,  Artabanus,  has  three  sons.  The 
eldest,  Arsaces,  is  a  military  hero  and  an  idol  of  the  popu- 
lace ;  he  is  also  the  object  of  consuming  envy  on  the  part 
of  the  second  son,  Vardanes,  and  of  loyal  affection  on  the 
part  of  the  third  son,  Gotarzes.  The  first  scene  is  in  the 
temple  of  the  sun,  and  represents  the  joy  of  this  youngest 
son,  over  a  great  victory  recently  gained  by  the  Prince  Ar- 
saces in  a  battle  with  the  Arabians.  The  second  scene  repre- 
sents the  envious  brother,  Vardanes,  and  his  friend  Lysias, 
as  talking  together  of  the  rage  they  both  felt  at  the  suc- 
cess of  Arsaces  and  at  his  enormous  popularity.  In  the 
course  of  this  conversation,  it  appears  that  Vardanes  is  in 
love  with  a  beautiful  Arabian  captive,  named  Evanthe, 
who,  however,  is  betrothed  to  Arsaces.  The  third  scene 
introduces  the  queen,  Thermusa,  who  reveals  to  an  attend- 
ant her  hatred  of  Arsaces  and  her  desire  for  his  destruc- 
tion ;  likewise,  her  wrath  at  the  beautiful  captive,  Evanthe, 
with  whom  the  king  himself  has  fallen  in  love.  In  the 


THOMAS  GODFREY.  2tf 

fourth  scene,  Evanthe  herself  appears,  and  talks  with  her 
maid,  Cleone,  of  the  popular  enthusiasm  for  her  beloved 
Arsaces,  and  of  her  own  eagerness  for  his  return : 

"  How  tedious  are  the  hours  which  bring  him 
To  my  fond,  panting  heart !     For  oh,  to  those 
Who  live  in  expectation  of  the  bliss, 
Time  slowly  creeps,  and  every  tardy  minute 
Seems  mocking  of  their  wishes.     Say,  Cleone, — 
For  you  beheld  the  triumph, — midst  his  pomp, 
Did  he  not  seem  to  curse  the  empty  show, 
The  pageant  greatness — enemy  to  love — 
Which  held  him  from  Evanthe  ?    Haste  to  tell  me, 
And  feed  my  greedy  ear  with  the  fond  tale." 

In  this  conversation,  while  waiting  for  her  lover,  Evanthe 
tells  the  story  of  her  early  life  and  of  her  captivity.  Her 
father,  a  high  officer  at  court,  and  a  great  general, 

"  was  reputed, 

Brave,  wise,  and  loyal ;  by  his  prince  beloved. 
Oft  has  he  led  his  conquering  troops,  and  forced 
From  frowning  Victory  her  awful  honors." 

One  day,  while 

"  bathing  in  Niphate's  silver  stream, 
Attended  only  by  one  favorite  maid, 
As  we  were  sporting  on  the  wanton  waves, 
Swift  from  the  wood  a  troop  of  horsemen  rushed; 
Rudely  they  seized  and  bore  me  trembling  off. 
In  vain  Edessa  with  her  shrieks  assailed 
The  heavens;  for  heaven  was  deaf  to  both  our  prayers.'' 

Her  captor,  a  cruel  and  lustful  wretch,  was  afterward 
killed  in  battle  by  Arsaces,  and  thus  Evanthe  fell  into  his 
gallant  keeping.  In  this  scene,  hearing  that  other  Arabian 
captives  had  been  brought  in  from  the  recent  battle,  she 
desires  to  get  news  of  her  father.  The  fifth  scene  presents 
the  king  in  state,  surrounded  by  his  princes  and  officers, 
and  in  the  act  of  reproaching  a  brave  Arabian  captive, 
named  Bethas,  who  is  before  him  in  chains.  To  the  king's 
hard  words,  Bethas  answers  : 


248  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITER  A  TURE. 

"  True  I  am  fallen,  but  glorious  was  my  fall ; 
The  day  was  bravely  fought;  we  did  our  best; 
But  victory's  of  heaven.     Look  o'er  yon  field. 
See  if  thou  findest  one  Arabian  back 
Disfigured  with  dishonorable  wounds  ! 
No,  here,  deep  on  their  bosoms,  are  engraved 
The  marks  of  honor  !    'Twas  through  here  their  souls 
Flew  to  their  blissful  seats.     Oh  !  why  did  I 
Survive  the  fatal  day  ?     To  be  this  slave — 
To  be  the  gaze  and  sport  of  vulgar  crowds ; 
Thus,  like  a  shackled  tiger,  stalk  my  round, 
And  grimly  lower  upon  the  shouting  herd. 
Ye  Gods  !— 

KING. 
Away  with  him  to  instant  death. 

ARSACES. 

Hear  me,  my  lord.     Oh,  not  on  this  bright  day — 
Let  not  this  day  of  joy  blush  with  his  blood  ; 
Nor  count  his  steady  loyalty  a  crime  ; 
But  give  him  life.     Arsaces  humbly  asks  it, 
And  may  you  e'er  be  served  with  honest  hearts."1 

The  king  grants  the  request  of  his  eldest  son,  and 
Bethas  is  sent  to  prison.  Thus  closes  the  first  Act.  The 
second  Act  opens  with  a  scene  wherein  the  malignant 
brother,  Vardanes,  is  contriving  with  Lysias  a  plot  to  de- 
stroy Arsaces.  Their  plan  is  to  induce  the  king  to  believe 
that  Arsaces  is  intending  to  slay  him  and  to  win  the 
throne,  and  that  the  intercession  of  the  prince  on  behalf 
of  Bethas  was  for  the  purpose  of  securing  the  help  of  that 
great  soldier.  The  talk  of  the  two  conspirators  is  by 
night,  and  in  the  gloomy  prison,  of  which  Lysias  has 
charge ;  and  it  proceeds  in  the  midst  of  a  fearful  storm : 

"  VARDANES. 
Heavens  !  what  a  night  is  this  ! 

LYSIAS. 

'Tis  filled  with  terror; 
Some  dread  event  beneath  this  horror  lurks, 

•  "Juvenile  Poems,"  etc.  120-131 


THOMAS  GODFREY. 

Ordained  by  fate's  irrevocable  doom,— 
Perhaps  Arsaces'  fall;  and  angry  heaven 
Speaks  it  in  thunder  to  the  trembling  world. 

VARDANES. 

Terror  indeed  !     It  seems  as  sickening  Nature 
Had  given  her  order  up  to  general  ruin  : 
The  heavens  appear  as  one  continued  flame  ; 
Earth  with  her  terror  shakes  ;  dim  night  retires. 
And  the  red  lightning  gives  a  dreadful  day, 
While  in  the  thunder's  voice  each  sound  is  lost. 
Fear  sinks  the  panting  heart  in  every  bosom  ; 
E'en  the  pale  dead,  affrighted  at  the  horror, 
As  though  unsafe,  start  from  their  marble  jails, 
And  howling  through  the  streets  are  seeking  shelter. 

LYSIAS. 

I  saw  a  flash  stream  through  the  angry  clouds. 
And  bend  its  course  to  where  a  stately  pine 
Behind  the  garden  stood  ;  quickly  it  seized 
And  wrapped  it  in  a  fiery  fold  ;  the  trunk 
Was  shivered  into  atoms,  and  the  branches 
Off  were  lopped,  and  wildly  scattered. 

VARDANES. 

Why  rage  the  elements  ?  They  are  not  cursed 
Like  me  !  Evanthe  frowns  not  angry  on  them ; 
The  wind  may  play  upon  her  beauteous  bosom, 
Nor  fear  her  chiding  ;  light  can  bless  her  sense, 
And  in  the  floating  mirror  she  beholds 
Those  beauties  which  can  fetter  all  mankind. 

LYSIAS. 

My  lord,  forget  her;  tear  her  from  your  breast. 
Who,  like  the  Phoenix,  gazes  on  the  sun, 
And  strives  to  soar  up  to  the  glorious  blaze, 
Should  never  leave  ambition's  brightest  object, 
To  turn,  and  view  the  beauties  of  a  flower. 

VARDANES. 

O  Lysias,  chide  no  more,  for  I  have  done. 
Yes,  I'll  forget  the  proud  disdainful  beauty  ; 
Hence  with  vain  love  :— ambition,  now,  alone, 


249 


250  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

Shall  guide  my  actions.     Since  mankind  delights 

To  give  me  pain,  I'll  study  mischief  too, 

And  shake  the  earth,  e'en  like  this  raging  tempest. 

LYSIAS. 

A  night  like  this,  so  dreadful  to  behold, — 
Since  my  remembrance'  birth,  I  never  saw. 

VARDANES. 

E'en  such  a  night,  dreadful  as  this,  they  say, 
My  teeming  mother  gave  me  to  the  world. 
Whence  by  those  sages  who,  in  knowledge  rich, 
Can  pry  into  futurity,  and  tell 
What  distant  ages  will  produce  of  wonder, 
My  days  were  deemed  to  be  a  hurricane. 


LYSIAS. 

Then,  haste  to  raise  the  tempest. 
My  soul  disdains  this  one  eternal  round, 
Where  each  succeeding  day  is  like  the  former. 
Trust  me,  my  noble  prince,  here  is  a  heart 
Steady  and  firm  to  all  your  purposes  ; 
And  here's  a  hand  that  knows  to  execute 
Whate'er  designs  thy  daring  breast  can  form, 
Nor  ever  shake  with  fear." 

It  is  on  this  conspiracy,  hatched  by  night  and  amid  the 
storm,  that  the  plot  turns.  From  that  point,  the  action 
moves  on  swiftly;  the  entanglements  and  cross-purposes 
and  astute  villanies  are  well  presented ;  Bethas  proves  to 
be  the  father  of  Evanthe  ;  the  conspirators  nearly  succeed ; 
they  murder  the  king  and  are  about  to  murder  Arsaces 
and  Bethas,  and  they  have  Evanthe  in  their  power,  when 
suddenly,  the  youngest  brother  arrives  with  a  great  army. 
A  battle  is  fought  in  the  streets  of  the  city.  Evanthe 
sends  Cleone  to  a  tower  to  see  how  the  contest  is  going, 
and  especially,  to  ascertain  the  fate  of  Arsaces.  Cleone 
sees  a  hero  slain,  whom  she  mistakes  for  Arsaces,  and 
rushes  down  with  the  dreadful  news.  Upon  this,  Evanthe 


BENJAMIN  FRANKLIN.  351 

takes  poison ;  Arsaces,  who  has  won  the  battle,  rushes  in, 
and  the  beautiful  maiden  dies  in  his  arms.  At  once  he 
kills  himself ;  and  the  kingdom  passes  to  the  loyal  and  lov- 
ing brother,  Gotarzes. 

The  whole  drama  is  powerful  in  diction  and  in  action. 
Of  course,  there  are  blemishes  in  it, — faults  of  inexperi- 
ence and  of  imperfect  culture :  but  it  has  many  noble  poetic 
passages;  the  characters  are  firmly  and  consistently  devel- 
oped ;  there  are  scenes  of  pathos  and  tragic  vividness ;  the 
plot  advances  with  rapid  movement  and  with  culminating 
force.  Thomas  Godfrey  was  a  true  poet;  and  "The  Prince 
of  Parthia "  is  a  noble  beginning  of  dramatic  literature  in 
America. 

VIII. 

On  the  tenth  of  May,  1762,  David  Hume  writing  from 
Edinburgh  to  Benjamin  Franklin  in  London,  used  these 
words:  "I  am  very  sorry  that  you  intend  soon  to  leave 
our  hemisphere.  America  has  sent  us  many  good  things, — 
gold,  silver,  sugar,  tobacco,  indigo,  and  so  forth ;  but  you 
are  the  first  philosopher,  and  indeed  the  first  great  man  of 
letters,  for  whom  we  are  beholden  to  her."1  Even  eight 
years  before  that  time,  an  eminent  French  scholar,  in  send- 
ing to  Franklin,  at  Philadelphia,  the  greetings  of  Buffon, 
Fonferriere,  Marty,  and  the  other  great  savans  of  Paris, 
had  added  this  testimony, — "  Your  name  is  venerated  in 
this  country."* 

Thus,  before  the  close  of  its  colonial  epoch,  America 
had  produced  one  man  of  science  and  of  letters  who  had 
reached  cosmopolitan  fame.  Yet,  within  the  period  here 
treated  of,  the  renown  of  Franklin  was  that  of  a  great  sci- 
entific experimenter,  rather  than  of  a  great  writer.  He 
had,  indeed,  very  early  in  life  acquired  that  mastery  of 
style — that  pure,  pithy,  racy,  and  delightful  diction— which 

>  Works  of  Franklin,  VI.  844.  '  Ibid-  X94- 


252  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITER  A  TURE, 

he  never  lost,  and  which  makes  him  still  one  of  the  great 
exemplars  of  modern  English  prose.  He  had,  likewise, 
before  1765,  written  many  of  his  best  productions; — 
essays  on  politics,  commerce,  education,  science,  religion, 
and  the  conduct  of  life ;  multitudes  of  wise  and  witty 
scraps  of  literature  for  his  newspaper,  his  almanacs,  and 
his  friends;  anecdotes,  apologues,  maxims;  above  all, 
many  of  those  incomparable  letters  for  his  private  corre- 
spondents, to  the  reading  of  which,  since  then,  the  whole 
world  has  been  admitted,  greatly  to  its  advantage  in 
wisdom  and  in  happiness.  Nevertheless,  all  his  writings 
had  been  composed  for  some  immediate  purpose,  and  if 
printed  at  all,  had  been  first  printed  separately,  and  as  a 
general  thing  without  the  author's  name.  In  1751,  how- 
ever, a  partial  collection  of  his  writings  was  published  in 
London  without  his  knowledge, — the  book  consisting  of 
the  papers  on  electricity  sent  by  him  to  his  friend,  Peter 
Collinson.  But  these  papers,  valuable  and  even  celebrated 
as  they  were  as  contributions  to  science,  could  give  to  the 
public  no  idea  of  the  various  and  the  marvellous  powers 
of  Franklin  as  a  contributor  to  literature. 

At  the  close  of  our  colonial  epoch,  Benjamin  Franklin, 
then  fifty-nine  years  of  age,  was  the  most  illustrious  of 
Americans,  and  one  of  the  most  illustrious  of  men  ;  and 
his  renown  rested  on  permanent  and  benign  achievements 
of  the  intellect.  He  was,  at  that  time,  on  the  verge  of  old 
age ;  his  splendid  career  as  a  scientific  discoverer  and  as  a 
citizen  seemed  rounding  to  its  full;  yet  there  then  lay 
outstretched  before  him — though  he  knew  it  not — still  an- 
other career  of  just  twenty-five  years ;  in  which  his  politi- 
cal services  to  his  country  and  to  mankind  were  to  bring 
him  more  glory  than  he  had  gained  from  all  he  had  done 
before  ;  and  in  which  he  was  to  write  one  book — the  story 
of  his  own  life — that  is  still  the  most  famous  production 
in  American  literature,  that  has  an  imperishable  charm  for 
all  classes  of  mankind,  that  has  passed  into  nearly  all  the 
literary  languages  of  the  globe,  and  that  is  "  one  of  the 


BENJAMIN  FRANKLIN.  253 

half-dozen  most  widely  popular  books  ever  printed." l  It 
will  be  most  profitable  for  us  to  defer  our  minute  study  of 
the  literary  character  of  this  great  writer,  until,  in  a  subse- 
quent volume  of  this  work,  we  can  view  his  literary  career 
as  a  whole. 


1  John  Bigelow,  in  "  Life  of  Franklin,"  etc.  L  86. 


CHAPTER   XVII. 

LITERATURE   IN   MARYLAND,  VIRGINIA,  AND  THE  SOUTH. 

i.  MARYLAND. 

I. — Ebenezer  Cook,  Gentleman — A  rough  satirist — His  "  Sot-Weed  Factor" 
— Outline  of  the  poem — Lively  sketches  of  early  Maryland  life — Hospi- 
tality— Manners — Indians — A  court-scene — Encounter  with  a  Quaker  and 
a  lawyer — Swindled  by  both — His  curse  upon  Maryland — His  "  Sot-Weed 
Redivivus. " 

2.  VIRGINIA. 

I. — James  Blair,  the  true  founder  of  literary  culture  in  Virginia — His  coming 
to  Virginia — Forcible  qualities  of  the  man — His  zeal  for  education — 
Founds  the  College  of  William  and  Mary — First  president  of  it — The 
Commencement  celebration  in  1700 — His  writings — "The  Present  State 
of  Virginia  and  the  College  " — His  published  discourses  on  the  Sermon 
on  the  Mount — His  literary  qualities — Passages  from  his  sermons. 

II. — Robert  Beverley— Parentage — Education  in  England — His  study  of  the 
history  of  Virginia — How  he  came  to  write  it — The  blunders  of  Olclmixon 
— Reception  of  Beverley 's  book — The  author  himself  seen  in  it — A  noble 
Virginian — A  friend  of  the  Indians — His  love  of  nature — His  style — • 
Humor — Hatred  of  indolence — Virginia  hospitality  and  comfort — Calum- 
nies upon  its  climate. 

III. — Hugh  Jones,  clergyman,  teacher,  and  school-book  maker — His  "  Pres- 
ent State  of  Virginia  " — Objects  of  the  book — Its  range — Its  sarcasms 
upon  the  other  colonies — Its  criticisms  upon  Virginia — Suggestions  for 
improvement. 

IV. — William  Byrd  of  Westover — His  princely  fortune  and  ways — His  cul- 
ture— Foreign  travel  —  Public  spirit — His  writings — "  History  of  the 
Dividing  Line  " — The  humor  and  literary  grace  of  the  book — Amusing 
sketch  of  early  history  of  Virginia — The  Christian  duty  of  marrying  Indian 
women — Sarcasms  upon  North  Carolina — Notices  of  plants,  animals,  and 
forest-life — The  praise  of  ginseng — His  "  Progress  to  the  Mines" — His 
"  Journey  to  the  Land  of  Eden." 

V. — William  Stith — Various  utilities  of  his  life — His  "  History  of  Virginia" 
— Defects  of  the  work — Its  good  qualities — Bitter  description  of  James 
the  First. 

3.    NORTH  CAROLINA. 

I. — John  Lawson — His  picture  of  Charleston  in  1700 — His  journey  to  North 
Carolina — What  he  saw  and  heard  by  the  way — Becomes  surveyor-general 

254 


EBENEZER   COOK.  355 

of  North  Carolina — His  descriptions  of  that  province — Its  coast — Sir 
Walter  Raleigh's  ship — A  land  of  Arcadian  delight — The  playful  alligator 
— A  study  of  Indians — Amiability  and  beauty  of  their  women— An  ancient 
squaw  —  A  conjuror — Indian  self-possession  —  The  author's  fate — His 
"  History  of  North  Carolina." 

4.  SOUTH  CAROLINA. 

I. — Alexander  Garden,  rector  of  St.  Philip's,  Charleston — The  force  of  bis 
character — Greatness  of  his  influence — His  abhorrence  of  Whitefield — 
His  sermons  and  letters  against  Whitefield — Their  bitterness  and  their 
literary  merit. 

5.  GEORGIA. 

I. — Georgia's  entrance  into  our  literature — A  conflict  with  Oglethorpe — The 
expert  and  witty  book  of  Patrick  Tailfer  and  others—"  A  True  and  His- 
torical Narrative  of  the  Colony  of  Georgia  " — Outline  of  it — A  masterly 
specimen  of  satire — Its  mock  dedication  to  Oglethorpe. 


I.    MARYLAND. 
I. 

A  VEIN  of  genuine  and  powerful  satire  was  struck  in 
Maryland  in  the  early  part  of  the  eighteenth  century  by  a 
writer  calling  himself  "  Ebenezer  Cook,  Gentleman."  Who 
he  was,  what  he  was,  whence  he  came,  whither  he  went, — 
are  facts  that  now  baffle  us.  His  book  is  an  obvious  ex- 
travaganza ;  and  the  autobiographic  narrative  involved  in 
the  plot,  is  probably  only  a  part  of  its  robust  and  jocular 
mirth.  It  is  entitled,  "The  Sot-Weed  Factor;  or,  A 
Voyage  to  Maryland, — a  satire,  in  which  is  described  the 
laws,  government,  courts,  and  constitutions  of  the  coun- 
try, and  also  the  buildings,  feasts,  frolics,  entertainments, 
and  drunken  humors  of  the  inhabitants  in  that  part  of 
America." 

The  author  pretends  to  be  an  Englishman,  under  doom 
of  emigrating  to  America  : 

"  Condemned  by  fate  to  wayward  curse 
Of  friends  unkind  and  empty  purse, — 
Plagues  worse  than  filled  Pandora's  box, — 
I  took  my  leave  of  Albion's  rocKs  : 


2  56  HIS  TOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITER  A  TURE. 

With  heavy  heart  concerned,  that  I 
Was  forced  my  native  soil  to  fly, 
And  the  old  world  must  bid  good-bye. 

Freighted  with  fools,  from  Plymouth  sound 
To  Maryland  our  ship  was  bound."  1 

After  a  three  months'  voyage,  they  arrived  in  Maryland. 
Intending  "  to  open  store,"  he  brought  on  shore  his  goods, 
and  at  once  the  "sot-weed  factors,"  or  tobacco  agents, 
swarmed  around  him  : 

"  In  shirts  and  drawers  of  Scotch  cloth  blue, 
With  neither  stockings,  hat,  nor  shoe, 
These  sot-weed  planters  crowd  the  shore, 
In  hue  as  tawny  as  a  Moor. 
Figures  so  strange,  no  god  designed 
To  be  a  part  of  human  kind ; 
But  wanton  nature,  void  of  rest, 
Moulded  the  brittle  clay  in  jest."  * 

He  wonders  who  and  what  they  are : 

"  At  last  a  fancy  very  odd 
Took  me,  this  was  the  land  of  Nod  ; 
Planted  at  first  when  vagrant  Cain 
His  brother  had  unjustly  slain  ; 
Then  conscious  of  the  crime  he'd  done, 
From  vengeance  dire  he  hither  run; 

And  ever  since  his  time,  the  place 
Has  harbored  a  detested  race, 
Who  when  they  could  not  live  at  home 
For  refuge  to  these  worlds  did  roam ; 
In  hopes  by  flight  they  might  prevent 
The  devil  and  his  full  intent, 
Obtain  from  triple-tree  reprieve, 
And  heaven  and  hell  alike  deceive." 8 

He  thinks  it  best  to  give  an  account  of  his  entertain- 
ment, 

1  "  The  Sot-Weed  Factor,"  i.  »  Ibid.  2.  «  Ibid.  2. 


EBENEZER  COOK.  2$? 

"  That  strangers  well  may  be  aware  on 
What  homely  diet  they  must  fare  on, 
To  touch  that  shore  where  no  good  sense  is  found, 
But  conversation's  lost  and  manner's  drowned.1' l 

He  crosses  the  river  in  a  canoe ;  after  some  trouble,  he 
finds  in  a  cottage  lodging  and  rough  but  cordial  hospi- 
tality. This  leads  him  to  describe  his  host,  the  furniture, 
the  customs  of  the  house,  and  his  own  futile  attempts  at 
sleeping  that  night — pestered  by  mosquitoes  and  so  forth. 
After  breakfast,  he  is  kindly  sent  on  his  journey,  and  goes 
to  a  place  called  Battletown.  On  his  way  he  meets  an 
Indian : 

"  No  mortal  creature  can  express 
His  wild  fantastic  air  and  dress. 


His  manly  shoulders,  such  as  please 
Widows  and  wives,  were  bathed  in 
Of  cub  and  bear."* 

He  proceeds  on  his  journey,  discussing  with  his  com- 
panion the  origin  of  Indians;  and  at  last  he  reaches  a 
place  where  court  is  in  session,  and  a  great  crowd  of  strange 
people  are  assembled  : 

"  Our  horses  to  a  tree  we  tied, 
And  forward  passed  among  the  rout 
To  choose  convenient  quarters  out; 
But  being  none  were  to  be  found, 
We  sat  like  others  on  the  ground, 
Carousing  punch  in  open  air, 
Till  crier  did  the  court  declare. 
The  planting  rabble  being  met, 
Their  drunken  worships  being  likewise  set, 
Crier  proclaims  that  noise  should  cease, 
And  straight  the  lawyers  broke  the  peace. 
Wrangling  for  plaintiff  and  defendant, 
I  thought  they  ne'er  would  make  an  end  on't, 
With  nonsense,  stuff,  and  false  quotations, 
With  brazen  lies  and  allegations; 

1  • '  The  Sot-Weed  Factor,"  2-3.  '  I*>id-  8- 

VOL.    II. — 17 


258  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITER  A  TURE. 

And  in  the  splitting  of  the  cause, 
They  used  such  motions  with  their  paws, 
As  showed  their  zeal  was  strongly  bent 
In  blows  to  end  the  argument."  ! 

A  mel£e  ensues,  in  which  judges,  jury,  clients  and  all 
take  a  hand  ;  and  thus  the  court  breaks  up  for  that  ses- 
sion: 

"The  court  adjourned  in  usual  manner, 
With  battle,  blood,  and  fractious  clamor."9 

The  poet  then  describes  the  scenes  of  riot,  debauchery, 
fighting,  and  robbery  that  filled  the  next  night ;  tells  how- 
he  lost  his  shoes,  his  stockings,  his  hat,  and  wig,  how  his 
friend  was  also  stripped,  and  how  after  getting  supplied 
anew,  he  and  his  friend  rode  away  in  disgust  to  the  home 
of  the  latter : 

"  There  with  good  punch  and  apple-juice 
We  spent  our  hours  without  abuse, 
Till  midnight  in  her  sable  vest 
Persuaded  gods  and  men  to  rest. "  * 

After  various  other  experiences,  he  thinks  it  time  to  sell 
his  wares : 

"To  this  intent,  with  guide  before, 
I  tripped  it  to  the  Eastern  Shore. 
While  riding  near  a  sandy  bay, 
I  met  a  Quaker,  yea  and  nay  ; 
A  pious,  conscientious  rogue, 
As  e'er  wore  bonnet  or  a  brogue ; 
Who  neither  swore  nor  kept  his  word. 
But  cheated  in  the  fear  of  God  ; 
And  when  his  debts  he  would  not  pay. 
By  Light  Within  he  ran  away."* 

By  this  drab  scoundrel  the  poet  is  basely  swindled ;  and 
in  his  rage  he  goes  to  a  lawyer,  who  was  also  a  doctor, 

"  an  ambidexter  quack 
Who  learnedly  had  got  the  knack 

'  "  The  Sot-Weed  Factor,"  12.        «  Ibid.  13.        «  Ibid.  15.       •  Ibid.  18. 


EBENEZER   COOK.  2$$ 

Of  giving  glisters,  making  pills, 
Of  filling  bonds,  and  forging  wills, 
And  with  a  stock  of  impudence, 
Supplied  his  want  of  wit  and  sense  ; 
With  looks  demure  amazing  people  ; 
No  wiser  than  a  daw  in  steeple." 

To  this  versatile  gentleman  the  poet  offers  a  great  fee: 

"  And  of  my  money  was  so  lavish, 
That  he'd  have  poisoned  half  the  parish, 
And  hanged  his  father  on  a  tree, 
For  such  another  tempting  fee."1 

In  the  litigation  which  followed,  the  author  is  cheated 
by  his  lawyer  even  worse  than  he  had  been  by  the  Quaker ; 
and  at  last,  mad  with  rage,  he  hurries  away  from  the  coun- 
try, leaving  this  curse  upon  it  as  his  legacy : 

"  May  cannibals,  transported  over  sea, 
Prey  on  these  shores  as  they  have  done  on  me  ; 
May  never  merchant's  trading  sails  explore 
This  cruel,  this  inhospitable  shore  ; 
But  left  abandoned  by  the  world  to  starve, 
May  they  sustain  the  fate  they  well  deserve. 
May  they  turn  savage  ;  or,  as  Indians  wild, 
From  trade,  converse,  and  happiness  exiled, 
Recreant  to  heaven,  may  they  adore  the  sun, 
And  into  pagan  superstitions  run, 
For  vengeance  ripe  ; 

May  wrath  divine  then  lay  these  regions  waste, 
Where  no  man's  faithful,  and  no  woman's  chaste. "• 

This  work  was  published  in  London,  a  quarto  of  twen- 
ty-one pages,  in  1708.'  Twenty-two  years  afterward,  a 
writer,  professing  to  be  the  same  rough  satirist,  published  at 
Annapolis  another  poem,  entitled  "Sot-Weed  Redivivus; 
or,  The  Planter's  Looking-Glass,  in  burlesque  verse,  calcu- 
lated for  the  meridian  of  Maryland," — a  quarto  of  twenty- 

1  M  The  Sot-Weed  Factor,"  19.  *  Ibid.  20-21. 

•  Reprinted  in  1866  in  "  Shea's  Early  Southern  Tracts,"  edited  by  Branti 
Mayer,  who  says  that  the  poem  was  reprinted  at  Annapolis  in  1731,  with  an 
additional  poem  on  Bacon's  Rebellion. 


26o  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

eight  pages.  The  first  poem  has,  indeed,  an  abundance  of 
filth  and  scurrility,  but  it  has  wit  besides ;  the  second  poem 
lacks  only  the  wit. 

2.  VIRGINIA. 

I. 

Probably  no  other  man  in  the  colonial  time  did  so  much 
for  the  intellectual  life  of  Virginia,  as  did  the  sturdy  and 
faithful  clergyman,  James  Blair,  who  came  into  the  colony 
in  1685,  and  who  died  there  in  1743,  having  been  a  mission- 
ary of  the  Church  of  England  fifty-eight  years,  the  commis- 
sary of  the  Bishop  of  London  fifty-four  years,  the  president 
of  the  College  of  William  and  Mary  fifty  years,  and  a  mem- 
ber of  the  king's  council  fifty  years. 

Born  in  Scotland  in  1656,  and  graduated  at  the  Univer- 
sity of  Edinburgh  in  1673,  he  was  rector  of  Cranston  until 
the  year  1682,  when  he  went  into  England  in  the  hope  of 
finding  preferment  there;  but  was  induced  by  the  Bishop 
of  London  to  give  up  his  life  to  the  service  of  God  and  of 
man  in  Virginia. 

On  his  arrival  there,  he  was  pained  not  only  at  the  dis- 
orderly and  ineffective  condition  of  the  church,  but  at  the 
almost  universal  neglect  of  education.  Henceforward,  the 
story  of  his  life  is  a  story  of  pure  and  tireless  labors  for 
the  rectification  of  both  these  evils.  He  was  a  man  of 
great  simplicity  and  force  of  character,  very  positive,  very 
persistent,  with  an  abundance  of  Scottish  shrewdness  as 
well  as  of  Scottish  enthusiasm,  actuated  by  a  lofty,  apos- 
tolic determination  to  be  useful  to  his  fellow-creatures — 
whether,  at  the  moment,  they  liked  it  or  not.  "  He  could 
not  rest  until  school-teachers  were  in  the  land ; " 1  and  he 
did  not  rest  until  there  was  a  college  in  the  land,  also. 
For  the  latter,  he  toiled  mightily,  and  with  invincible 
hopefulness.  First,  he  induced  the  Virginians  themselves 
to  put  their  names  to  subscriptions  for  a  college,  to  the 

1  Edward  D.  Neill,  "  Notes  on  the  Va.  Colonial  Clergy,"  23. 


JAMES  BLAIR.  26j 

amount  of  twenty-five  hundred  pounds  sterling.  Next, 
having  secured  for  the  plan  of  a  college  the  approbation 
of  the  colonial  assembly,  he  crossed  the  ocean,  and  against 
all  official  resistance  gained  for  it  the  approbation  of  the 
monarchs  of  England  also, — in  whose  honor  the  little  col- 
lege was  named  William  and  Mary.  Then,  returning  to 
Virginia  in  1693.  with  a  royal  charter  for  the  college  and 
a  royal  endowment,  the  indefatigable  man  laid  its  founda- 
tions, and  he  served  it  with  dauntless  fidelity  the  next 
fifty  years.  In  the  year  1700,  the  Commencement  was 
celebrated  there  with  much  eclat :  "  There  was  a  great  con- 
course of  people.  Several  planters  came  thither  in  coaches, 
and  others  in  sloops  from  New  York,  Pennsylvania,  and 
Maryland, — it  being  a  new  thing  in  that  part  of  America 
to  hear  graduates  perform  their  exercises.  The  Indians 
themselves  had  the  curiosity,  some  of  them,  to  visit  Wil- 
liamsburg  upon  that  occasion;  and  the  whole  country 
rejoiced  as  if  they  had  some  relish  of  learning." l 

Thus,  James  Blair  may  be  called  the  creator  of  the 
healthiest  and  the  most  extensive  intellectual  influence 
that  was  felt  in  the  southern  group  of  colonies  before  the 
Revolution.  Moreover,  his  direct  contributions  to  Ameri- 
can literature  were  by  no  means  despicable.  He  was, 
probably,  the  principal  writer  of  a  book  upon  the  title- 
page  of  which  the  names  of  Henry  Hartwell  and  Edward 
Chilton  are  joined  with  his  own,  and  which  was  published 
in  London  in  1727:  "The  Present  State  of  Virginia  and 
the  College."  It  is  expertly  written ;  is  neat  and  vigorous 
in  style;  abounds  in  facts  respecting  the  condition  of 
civilization  in  the  colony  at  that  time ;  and  is  not  lacking 
in  the  courage  of  plain  speech :  "  As  to  all  the  natural  ad- 
vantages of  a  country,"  Virginia  "  is  one  of  the  best,  but 
as  to  the  improved  ones,  one  of  the  worst,  of  all  the  Eng- 
lish plantations  in  America.  When  one  considers  the 
wholesomeness  of  its  air,  the  fertility  of  its  soil,  the  com- 

1  C.  Campbell,  "  Hist.  Va."  361-362. 


262  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITER  A  TURE, 

modiousness  of  its  navigable  rivers  and  creeks,  the  open- 
ness of  its  coast  all  the  year  long,  the  conveniency  of  its 
fresh-water  runs  and  springs,  the  plenty  of  its  fish,  fowl, 
and  wild  beasts,  the  variety  of  its  simples  and  dyeing- 
woods,  the  abundance  of  its  timbers,  minerals,  wild  vines, 
and  fruits,  the  temperature  of  its  climate ;  ...  in  short,  if 
it  be  looked  upon  in  all  respects  as  it  came  out  of  the  hand 
of  God,  it  is  certainly  one  of  the  best  countries  in  the 
world.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  if  we  enquire  for  well- 
built  towns,  for  convenient  ports  and  markets,  for  plenty 
of  ships  and  seamen,  for  well-improved  trades  and  manu- 
factures, for  well-educated  children,  for  an  industrious  and 
thriving  people,  or  for  an  happy  government  in  church  and 
state,  and  in  short  for  all  the  other  advantages  in  human 
improvements,  it  is  certainly,  for  all  these  things,  one  of 
the  poorest,  miserablest,  and  worst  countries  in  all  Amer- 
ica, that  is  inhabited  by  Christians."  l 

But  James  Blair's  chief  claim  to  remembrance  in  our 
literary  history  is  based  upon  a  series  of  one  hundred  and 
seventeen  discourses  on  "  Our  Saviour's  Divine  Sermon  on 
the  Mount,"  which  were  twice  published  in  London  dur- 
ing the  author's  lifetime,  and  which  received  public  ap- 
plause from  the  great  English  theologian,  Daniel  Water- 
land.2  In  these  discourses  the  range  of  topics  is  as  wide 
as  that  of  the  wonderful  discourse  upon  which  they  are 
founded.  The  thought  is  fully  wrought  out ;  the  divisions 
are  sharp  and  formal ;  each  discourse  is  short  and  to  the 
point.  The  tone  of  the  author's  mind  is  moderate,  judi- 
cial, charitable,  catholic ;  he  is  not  brilliant ;  his  style  is 
smooth,  simple,  honest,  earnest ;  there  is  no  display ;  he 
is  trying  to  make  people  good.  The  drift  of  his  argument 
is  steadily  toward  practical  results.  "  An  error  in  morals," 

1  "  The  Present  State,"  etc.  1-2. 

'First  published  in  London  in  1722  in  five  vols.;  republished  there  in 
1740  in  four  vols.,  with  a  preface  by  Dr.  Waterland.  The  work  is  extremely 
rare  in  this  country.  I  have  used  the  incomplete  copy  of  the  second  ed.  iu 
the  State  Library  at  Albany. 


JAMES  BLAIR.  263 

he  says,  "  is  more  dangerous  than  a  mere  speculative  error. 
...  It  is  only  the  practical  errors,  the  transgressions  of 
morality,  which  our  Saviour  degrades  into  the  lowest  rank. 
.  .  .  Speculative  errors,  which  have  no  influence  on  the 
life  and  conversation,  cannot  be  near  so  dangerous  as  those 
errors  which  lead  men  out  of  the  way  of  their  duty.  As 
in  a  voyage  at  sea,  the  master  and  seamen  and  passengers 
may  chance  to  see  several  objects,  and  very  friendly  and 
innocently  may  differ  in  their  opinions  about  the  names, 
and  natures,  and  colors,  and  shapes,  and  properties  of 
them  ;  and  yet  none  of  all  these  opinions,  the  most  true 
or  the  most  erroneous,  either  furthers  or  hinders  their  voy- 
age. But  if  they  should  be  in  an  error  in  using  a  bad  com- 
pass, or  in  not  knowing  the  tides  and  currents,  the  rocks 
and  shelves  :  if  they  should  run  rashly  on  the  shore  in  the 
night-time,  by  not  keeping  a  right  reckoning,  thinking 
themselves  far  enough  from  land  ; — these  are  errors  of  fatal 
consequence,  such  as  may  endanger  the  ship  and  voyage. 
Just  so  it  is  in  errors  of  opinion."1 

While  he  insists  upon  the  highest  excellence  in  outward 
conduct,  he  shows  that  all  moral  significance  attaches  to  the 
inward  state  of  a  man  :  "  It  is  the  great  secret  of  Christian 
morals,  which  our  Saviour  drives  at  in  all  duties  whatsoever, 
and  is  the  principal  thing  which  distinguishes  the  right- 
eousness of  a  good  Christian,  from  the  righteousness  of  the 
Scribes  and  Pharisees." 2  "  Particularly,  has  Christ  inter- 
preted the  law  in  a  more  spiritual  sense,  killing  vice  in  the 
seed,  and  strictly  forbidding  the  feeding  the  very  thoughts 
and  imaginations  with  it.  Then,  let  us  employ  a  great 
part  of  our  care  in  the  good  government  of  our  heart  and 
thoughts,  that  when  wicked  fancies  or  imaginations  start 
up  in  our  minds,  or  are  thrown  in  by  the  Devil,  we  may 
take  care  not  to  harbor  them,  but  to  throw  them  quickly 
out,  before  they  sprout  out  into  bad  resolutions  and  de- 
signs, or  ripen  into  wicked  actions  and  evil  habits." 3 

1  Discourses,  II.  48-49-  *  Ibid.  In-  67-  *  Ibid-  IT 


264  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 


II. 

Virginia  had  been  in  existence  a  hundred  years  before  it 
produced  an  historian  of  its  own.  This  was  Robert  Bev- 
erley,  of  an  ancient  family  in  England,  himself  born  in 
Virginia.  His  father,  likewise  Robert  Beverley,  a  man  of 
considerable  fortune  at  Beverley  in  Yorkshire,  had  removed 
to  the  colony  in  time  to  become  a  prominent  politician  in 
1676,  acting  resolutely,  amid  the  tumults  of  that  year,  on 
the  side  of  Sir  William  Berkeley  against  Nathaniel  Bacon. 
The  younger  Beverley  was  sent  to  England  for  his  educa- 
tion ;  and  early  in  life  seems  to  have  been  employed  by 
his  father  and  an  elder  brother  as  assistant  in  charge  of  the 
colonial  records.  This  circumstance  turned  his  thoughts 
toward  the  study  of  his  country's  history.1  Happening  to 
be  in  London  in  1703,  his  bookseller  told  him  of  a  new 
work  just  then  in  press, — Oldmixon's  "  British  Empire  in 
America," — and  gave  him  for  inspection,  the  sheets  relat- 
ing to  Virginia  and  Carolina.  These  sheets  the  young 
Virginian  began  to  read,  with  his  pen  in  hand  for  the  pur- 
pose  of  jotting  down  any  corrections  that  might  be  neces- 
sary ;  but  he  soon  gave  up  that  task  in  despair, — the  new 
book  being  quite  beyond  the  reach  of  correction.  Prompted 
by  this  experience,  and  having  with  him  his  own  memo- 
randa of  studies  upon  the  subject,  Beverley  at  once  un- 
dertook to  write  a  history  of  his  native  colony.  This  was 
first  published  in  London,  in  1705  ;  was  published  in  a 
French  translation,  both  at  Paris  and  at  Amsterdam,  in 
1707;  and  was  brought  out  in  London  in  a  second  Eng- 
lish edition,  much  enlarged  and  improved,  in  I722.2 

The  traits  of  the  man  confront  us  on  every  page  of  this 
book.  He  had  large  wealth  in  lands,  in  houses,  and  in  slaves, 
high  social  position,  intense  affection  for  Virginia,  a  sturdy 
pride  in  it ;  and  he  was  as  independent  in  mind  as  he  was 

1  Pref.  to  "  Hist.  Va."  xvii. 

*  Reprinted  in  1855  at  Richmond,  with  introduction  by  Charles  Campbell. 


ROBERT  BEVERLEY.  26$ 

in  circumstances.  The  robust  virtues — simplicity,  thrift, 
industry,  enterprise,  economy — had  not  died  out  of  him  in 
the  soft  air  of  Virginia.  He  lived  upon  his  great  estate  with 
Spartan  plainness ; '  and  in  his  book  he  never  misses  the  op- 
portunity of  rasping  his  countrymen  for  their  luxury,  their 
supineness,  and  the  indolent  use  they  were  making  of  the 
overflowing  bounties  of  nature.  He  gives  first  the  history 
of  the  colony,  then  an  account  of  the  country  itself,  then  a 
description  of  the  Indians,  finally  a  picture  of  the  political 
and  industrial  condition  of  the  colony  in  his  own  time. 
He  writes  not  like  a  book-man  or  a  theorist,  but  like  a 
country-gentleman  and  a  man  of  affairs.  He  speaks  out 
plainly  what  he  thinks;  he  has  respect  to  limits,  never 
loses  himself  in  pedantries  or  long  stories;  he  interprets  all 
things,  past  and  present,  with  shrewd,  practical  sense.  In 
his  style  there  is  no  flavor  of  classical  study,  or  even  of 
modern  letters;  yet  it  has  the  promptness,  lucidity,  and 
raciness  of  real  talk  among  educated  men  of  the  world. 
It  continues  to  be  interesting.  In  some  places,  his  history 
degenerates  into  a  partisan  pamphlet ;  for  he  inherited  his 
father's  hate  of  the  Virginia  governors, — Lord  Culpepper 
and  the  Earl  of  Effingham, — having  also  a  plenty  of  hate 
on  his  own  account  for  Francis  Nicholson.  He  is  not 
heedless  of  accuracy;  yet  he  has  not  a  few  errors.  He 
knew  the  Indians  well:  in  fact,  in  his  first  edition  he  iden- 
tified himself  with  them  by  playfully  calling  himself  an 
Indian;  and  the  portion  of  his  book  devoted  to  them  is 
written  with  love  of  the  subject  and  full  mastery  of  it. 
All  his  notices  of  natural  objects  also,  are  sharp  and  full. 
His  eye  was  quick  to  see  the  characteristics  of  all  sorts  of 
dumb  creatures,  in  the  midst  of  whose  haunts  he  passed  his 
manly  life ;  as  may  be  illustrated  in  his  graphic  and  amus- 
ing stories  of  the  snake  in  the  act  of  charming  and  swal- 
lowing a  hare,2  and  of  the  fish-hawk  pursued  by  a  bald  eagle.8 


1  Descriptions  of  his  home  in  1715  may  be  read  in  James  Fontaine's  "  Me- 
moirs of  a  Huguenot  Family,"  165. 
»  "  Hist.  Va."  245-246.    '  •  Ibid.  MX. 


266  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

The  whole  work  is  fresh,  original ;  not  weighed  down 
by  documents ;  the  living  testimony  of  a  proud  and  gen- 
erous Virginian.  Without  apparent  effort,  he  often  hits 
upon  strong  and  happy  phrases,  as  when  he  speaks  of  "  the 
almighty  power  of  gold  " — anticipating  the  more  famous 
expression  of  Washington  Irving.  There  is  a  tonic  enjoy- 
ment in  his  under-flavor  of  humor  and  in  his  crisp  sar- 
casms. He  expresses  a  sort  of  contemptuous  surprise  at 
the  "prodigious  phantasms"  with  respect  to  Virginia, 
which  he  found  cherished  among  the  English ;  as,  "  that 
the  servants  in  Virginia  are  made  to  draw  in  cart,  and 
plough  as  horses  and  oxen  do  in  England,  and  that  the 
country  turns  all  people  black  who  go  to  live  there." l  As 
to  his  own  country,  he  has  a  smile  of  quiet  ridicule  for  its 
military  development :  "  The  militia  are  the  only  standing 
forces  in  Virginia.  They  are  happy  in  the  enjoyment  of 
an  everlasting  peace,  which  their  poverty  and  want  of 
towns  secure  to  them."  2  But  if  their  military  power  was 
small,  their  hospitality  certainly  was  not  small ;  and  he 
speaks  of  it  with  satisfaction  :  "  The  inhabitants  are  very 
courteous  to  travellers,  who  need  no  other  recommenda- 
tion but  the  being  human  creatures.  A  stranger  has  no 
more  to  do  but  to  inquire  upon  the  road  where  any  gentle- 
man or  good  housekeeper  lives ;  and  there  he  may  depend 
upon  being  received  with  hospitality.  This  good  nature  is 
so  general  among  their  people,  that  the  gentry  when  they 
go  abroad  order  their  principal  servant  to  entertain  all 
visitors  with  everything  the  plantation  affords.  And  the 
poor  planters  who  have  but  one  bed  will  often  sit  up,  or 
lie  upon  a  form  or  couch  all  night,  to  make  room  for  a 
weary  traveller  to  repose  himself  after  his  journey.  If  there 
happen  to  be  a  churl  that,  either  out  of  covetousness  or 
ill  nature,  won't  comply  with  this  generous  custom,  he  has 
a  mark  of  infamy  set  upon  him,  and  is  abhorred  by  all."* 
The  author  exults  in  the  fact  that  "  nobody  is  poor  enough 

1  "  Hist.  Va."  Pref.  xvii.  »  Ibid.  217.  « Ibid.  258. 


ROBERT  BEVERLEY.  267 

to  beg  or  want  food ; "  but  checks  himself  with  the  con- 
fession, that  "  they  have  abundance  of  people  that  are 
lazy  enough  to  deserve  it.  I  remember  the  time  when 
five  pounds  was  left  by  a  charitable  testator  to  the  poor 
of  the  parish  he  lived  in;  and  it  lay  nine  years  before 
the  executors  could  find  one  poor  enough  to  accept  of 
this  legacy ;  but  at  last  it  was  given  to  an  old  woman."  l 
When  he  thinks  of  the  charms  of  the  climate  of  Virginia, 
he  is  indignant  at  the  calumnies  heaped  upon  it  by  those 
English  merchants  who  had  visited  it,  but  who,  with 
insular  obstinacy,  persisted  there  in  all  the  habits  that 
they  were  used  to  in  a  very  different  climate :  "  Many  of 
the  merchants  and  others  that  go  thither  from  England, 
make  no  distinction  between  a  cold  and  hot  country ;  but 
wisely  go  sweltering  about  in  their  thick  clothes  all  the  sum- 
mer, because  forsooth  they  used  to  do  so  in  their  northern 
climate ;  and  then  unfairly  complain  of  the  heat  of  the 
country.  They  greedily  surfeit  with  their  delicious  fruits, 
and  are  guilty  of  great  intemperance  therein,  through  the 
exceeding  plenty  thereof,  and  liberty  given  by  the  inhab- 
itants ;  by  which  means  they  fall  sick,  and  then  unjustly 
complain  of  the  unhealthiness  of  the  country.  In  the 
next  place,  the  sailors,  for  want  of  towns  there,  were  put 
to  the  hardship  of  rolling  most  of  the  tobacco  a  mile  or 
more  to  the  water-side  ;  this  splinters  their  hands  some- 
times, and  provokes  them  to  curse  the  country.  Such  ex- 
ercise and  a  bright  sun  made  them  hot,  and  then  they 
imprudently  fell  to  drinking  cold  water,  or  perhaps  new 
cider,  which  in  its  season  they  found  in  every  planter's 
house;  or  else  they  greedily  devour  the  green  fruit  and 
unripe  trash  they  met  with,  and  so  fell  into  fluxes,  fevers, 
and  the  bellyache ;  and  then,  to  spare  their  own  indiscre- 
tion, they  in  their  tarpaulin  language  cry,  God  d— n  the 
country."  * 

'  "  Hist  Va."  M3.  '  Ibi<L  ML 


268  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 


In  1724,  there  came  out  in  London  a  book  of  a  hundred 
and  fifty-one  pages,  entitled  "  The  Present  State  of  Vir- 
ginia." Its  author  was  a  Virginia  clergyman,  Hugh  Jones, 
born  in  England,  but  naturalized  in  the  new  world  by  a 
life  of  versatile  and  energetic  usefulness  there ;  rector  of 
Jamestown,  mathematical  professor  in  William  and  Mary 
College,  and  chaplain  to  the  colonial  assembly.  He  was 
one  of  the  earliest  Americans  to  appease  the  demand  for 
elementary  text-books  in  our  schools,  serving  well  the 
advancing  generations  by  his  "  English  Grammar,"  his 
"  Accidence  to  Mathematics,"  and  his  "  Accidence  to 
Christianity."  His  book  on  Virginia,  which  appears  to 
have  been  published  during  some  visit  of  the  author  to 
the  mother-country,  evidently  had  a  philanthropic  inten- 
tion. He  sets  forth  the  condition  of  Virginia  up  to  latest 
dates,  in  the  hope  of  arousing  and  directing  a  more  intel- 
ligent cooperation  in  England  with  the  efforts  of  good 
men  in  the  new  world  who  were  trying  to  build  up  there  a 
prosperous  and  benign  commonwealth.  His  book  is  that 
of  an  earnest,  downright,  and  rather  original  man,  intent 
on  getting  some  good  done  in  his  part  of  the  world,  and 
having  clear  views  as  to  the  methods  of  doing  it.  He 
describes  frankly  the  sort  of  material  then  extant  in  Vir- 
ginia to  make  a  nation  of — Indians,  negroes,  Englishmen  ; 
its  next  door  neighbors,  also — the  North  Carolinians  and 
the  Marylanders ;  likewise,  the  schemes  he  had  formed  for 
promoting  learning,  religion,  and  trade  in  those  regions. 
It  is  a  book  of  solid  facts  and  solid  suggestions,  written  in 
a  plain,  positive  style,  just  sufficiently  tinctured  with  the 
gentlemanly  egotism  of  a  Virginian  and  of  a  Churchman. 

His  eulogiums  upon  his  adopted  colony  are  not  incapa- 
ble of  a  sarcastic  edge  when  turned  toward  the  other  col- 
onies in  America  :  "If  New  England  be  called  a  receptacle 
of  dissenters,  and  an  Amsterdam  of  religion,  Pennsylvania 


HUGH  JONES,  262 

the  nurse  of  Quakers,  Maryland  the  retirement  of  Roman 
Catholics,  North  Carolina  the  refuge  of  runaways,  and 
South  Carolina  the  delight  of  buccaneers  and  pirates,  Vir- 
ginia may  be  justly  esteemed  the  happy  retreat  of  true 
Britons  and  true  Churchmen."  * 

Yet  he  is  nowhere  blind  to  the  blemishes  of  his  own 
noble  colony  and  its  people  ;  he  particularly  sees  its  weak- 
ness in  the  great  matters  of  popular  education,  individual 
discipline,  public  spirit,  industry,  and  the  like.  The  Vir- 
ginians themselves,  he  tells  us,  "  have  good  natural  notions 
and  will  soon  learn  arts  and  sciences;  but  are  generally 
diverted,  by  business  or  inclination,  from  profound  study 
and  prying  into  the  depth  of  things.  .  .  .  Through  their 
quick  apprehension  they  have  a  sufficiency  of  knowledge 
and  fluency  of  tongue,  though  their  learning  for  the  most 
part  be  but  superficial.  They  are  more  inclinable  to  read 
men  by  business  and  conversation,  than  to  dive  into  books." 
"  As  for  education,  several  are  sent  to  England  for  it." 
"  The  common  planters,  leading  easy  lives,  don't  much 
admire  labor  or  any  manly  exercise  except  horse-racing, 
nor  diversion  except  cock-fighting.  .  .  .  This  easy  way  of 
living  and  the  heat  of  the  summer  makes  some  very  lazy, 
who  are  then  said  to  be  climate-struck."  "  They  are  such 
lovers  of  riding,  that  almost  every  ordinary  person  keeps 
a  horse ;  and  I  have  known  some  spend  the  morning  in 
ranging  several  miles  in  the  woods  to  find  and  catch  their 
horses,  only  to  ride  two  or  three  miles  to  church,  to  the 
court-house,  or  to  a  horse-race."* 

He  laments  the  poverty  and  consequent  ineffectiveness 
of  the  College  of  William  and  Mary :  "  For  it  is  now  a 
college  without  a  chapel,  without  a  scholarship,  and  with- 
out a  statute ;  there  is  a  library  without  books,  compara- 
tively speaking ;  and  a  president  without  a  fixed  salary 
till  of  late."  » 


1  "  The  Present  State  of  Va."  48.  '  Ibid.  44,  45,  48,  49- 

» Ibid.  83. 


270  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITER  A  TURE. 

He  makes  valuable  suggestions  for  the  religious  improve- 
ment  of  Virginia,  and  draws  portraits  of  the  sort  of  clergy- 
men who  are  needed  there  :  not  "  quarrelsome  and  litigious 
ministers  who  would  differ  with  their  parishioners  about 
insignificant  trifles,"  nor  "  mere  scholars  and  stoics,"  nor 
"zealots  too  rigid  in  outward  appearance,"  but  pure,  de- 
vout, sensible,  and  friendly  men,  fitted  to  deal  success- 
fully with  a  warm-hearted  and  high-spirited  people  who 
"  are  for  moderate  views  neither  high  nor  low,"  and  who 
"  never  refuse  to  shout, 

God  bless  the  church,  and  George  its  defender, 
Convert  the  fanatics,  and  balk  the  Pretender."  * 


IV. 

Perhaps  the  most  accomplished  and  the  wittiest  Vir- 
ginian of  the  colonial  time  was  William  Byrd  of  Westover, 
a  man  of  princely  fortune  and  of  princely  ways.  He  was 
born  in  the  colony  in  1674,  and  died  there  in  1744.  His 
father,  having  the  same  name,  had  come  to  Virginia  in 
early  life ;  had  founded  a  great  estate  there  ;  during  the  lat- 
ter part  of  the  seventeenth  century,  had  been  conspicuous 
in  public  affairs ;  and  finding  this  son  to  be  endowed  with 
every  personal  quality  corresponding  to  the  great  position 
that  awaited  him  in  life,  had  given  him  the  amplest  train- 
ing in  the  schools  and  in  the  society  of  Europe.  He  was 
educated  in  England,  under  the  particular  care  of  Sir 
Robert  Southwell;  "was  called  to  the  bar  in  the  Middle 
Temple ;  studied  for  some  time  in  the  Low  Countries ; 
visited  the  court  of  France  ;  and  was  chosen  Fellow  of  the 
Royal  Society."  In  England,  he  had  "  the  acquaintance 
of  many  of  the  first  persons  of  the  age  for  knowledge,  wit, 
virtue,  birth,  or  high  station,  and,  particularly,  contracted 
a  most  intimate  and  bosom  friendship  with  the  learned 
and  illustrious  Charles  Boyle,  Earl  of  Orrery." 2 

1  "  The  Present  State  of  Va."  95-96.  •  "  Byrd  Manuscripts."  I.  xL 


WILLIAM  BYRD. 


271 


On  returning  to  his  native  land,  he  entered  upon  a  long 
career  of  public  and  private  usefulness.  He  was  made 
receiver-general  of  the  king's  revenues;  for  thirty-seven 
years  he  was  a  member  of  the  council,  and  at  last  its 
president ;  three  times  he  was  sent  as  the  agent  of  Vir- 
ginia to  the  court  of  England  ;  he  founded  the  two  famous 
cities  of  Richmond  and  Petersburg  ;  as  the  proprietor  of 
tracts  of  land  vast  enough  for  a  royal  domain,  he  was  ac- 
tive in  the  development  of  the  agricultural  and  mineral 
resources  of  the  colony  ;  best  of  all,  he  was  "  the  constant 
enemy  of  all  exorbitant  power,  and  hearty  friend  to  the 
liberties  of  his  country."  l  His  course  in  private  life  was 
equally  brilliant  and  attractive.  On  his  estate  at  West- 
over  he  lived  in  a  style  of  great  magnificence.  He  was  a 
student  of  science,  a  man  of  wit,  of  letters,  of  elegant 
tastes  ;  and  he  had  "  the  best  and  most  copious  collection 
of  books  "  *  in  that  part  of  America. 

Of  course,  such  a  man,  absorbed  by  manifold  engage- 
ments, and  living  in  a  whirl  of  gayety  and  of  hospitable 
pleasures,  was  not  likely  to  devote  himself  to  any  deliber- 
ate literary  work.  Yet  his  mind  was  an  active  and  fertile 
one  ;  and  stirred  by  outward  incidents,  he  dashed  off  two 
or  three  bits  of  writing  that  have  extraordinary  merit,— 
representing  the  geniality  of  his  nature,  his  wit,  and  the 
facility  and  grace  of  his  style. 

In  the  early  part  of  the  year  1729,  in  obedience  to  an 
appointment  by  the  governor  of  Virginia,  William  Byrd 
joined  an  expedition  for  fixing  the  dividing  line  between 
that  colony  and  North  Carolina.  The  party  consisted  of 
two  other  commissioners  for  Virginia,  the  commissioners 
for  North  Carolina,  a  chaplain,  several  surveyors,  and  nu- 
merous attendants  and  laborers.  The  expedition  occupied 
six  weeks  in  the  spring  of  that  year ;  it  was  then  aban- 
doned on  account  of  the  hot  weather ;  and  being  resumed 
in  the  autumn,  it  occupied  ten  weeks  more.  Beginning  at 

>  "  Byrd  Manuscripts,"  I.  xi.          •  Wm.  Stith,  -  Hist.  Va."  Pref.  T. 


2/2 


HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 


a  point  on  the  sea-coast,  the  line  was  run  westward  six 
hundred  miles,  through  the  Great  Dismal  Swamp,  through 
"  marshes  .  .  .  and  great  waters,"  "  over  steep  hills,  crag- 
gy rocks,  and  thickets  hardly  penetrable."  Of  the  two 
expeditions  that  accomplished  this  labor,  William  Byrd 
kept  a  journal,  which,  after  lying  in  manuscript  upwards 
of  a  century,  was  first  published  in  1841,  under  the  title 
given  to  it  by  its  author, — "  The  History  of  the  Dividing 
Line."1 

In  the  peculiar  qualities  that  distinguish  this  little 
book,  it  is  almost  unique  in  our  colonial  age ;  and  it  is, 
without  question,  one  of  the  most  delightful  of  the  lit- 
erary legacies  which  that  age  has  handed  down  to  ours. 
Here  we  have  the  off-hand,  daily  jottings  of  a  very  clever 
Virginia  gentleman  of  the  early  time,  who  has  travelled 
much,  read  much,  been  long  in  the  best  company ;  and 
who,  with  a  gayety  that  will  not  yield  to  any  hardship 
or  vexation,  travels  for  several  weeks  through  a  wilder- 
ness, accompanied  by  a  little  army  of  very  miscellaneous 
and  very  queer  people,  encountering  Indians,  semi-savage 
whites,  wild  beasts,  insects,  reptiles,  every  sort  of  fatigue 
and  discomfort,  the  horrors  and  the  grandeurs  of  nature 
in  its  wildest  state. 

As  he  is  to  record  the  story  of  a  definite  partitionment 
from  Virginia  of  land  that  once  belonged  to  it,  he  begins 
with  a  sparkling  sketch  of  the  history  of  Virginia  up  to 
that  time ;  particularly  showing  how  all  English  America 
was  once  Virginia,  and  how  all  other  English  colonies  have 
been  formed  by  being  "  carved  out  of  Virginia."  He  sets 
off,  with  much  humor,  the  traits  of  the  first  inhabitants  of 
Virginia;  saying  that  the  original  colony  consisted  of 
"  about  an  hundred  men,  most  of  them  reprobates  of  good 


1  This  was  then  printed  with  other  papers  of  Colonel  Byrd  under  the  general 
title  of  "  The  Westover  Manuscripts."  A  more  complete  and  a  more  ac- 
curate publication  of  his  writings,  edited  by  T.  H.  Wynne,  was  made  in  1866^ 
under  the  better  title  of  "Byrd  Manuscripts." 


WILLIAM  BYRD.  2^ 

families  ;  "  '  and  that  at  Jamestown,  "  like  true  Englishmen, 
they  built  a  church  that  cost  no  more  than  fifty  pounds, 
and  a  tavern  that  cost  five  hundred."*  He  points  out  the 
great  mistake  made  by  the  first  colonists  in  not  intermar- 
rying with  the  Indians  :  "  Morals  and  all  considered,  I 
can't  think  the  Indians  were  much  greater  heathens  than 
the  first  adventurers,  who,  had  they  been  good  Christians, 
would  have  had  the  charity  to  take  this  only  method  of 
converting  the  natives  to  Christianity.  For,  after  all  that 
can  be  said,  a  sprightly  lover  is  the  most  prevailing  mis- 
sionary that  can  be  sent  amongst  these,  or  any  other  infi- 
dels. Besides,  the  poor  Indians  would  have  had  less  rea- 
son to  complain  that  the  English  took  away  their  land,  if 
they  had  received  it  by  way  of  portion  with  their  daugh- 
ters. .  .  .  Nor  would  the  shade  of  the  skin  have  been  any 
reproach  at  this  day  ;  for  if  a  Moor  may  be  washed  white 
in  three  generations,  surely  an  Indian  might  have  been 
blanched  in  two."  3  "  I  may  safely  venture  to  say,  the  In- 
dian women  would  have  made  altogether  as  honest  wives 
for  the  first  planters,  as  the  damsels  they  used  to  purchase 
from  aboard  the  ships.  It  is  strange,  therefore,  that  any 
good  Christian  should  have  refused  a  wholesome,  straight 
bedfellow,  when  he  might  have  had  so  fair  a  portion  with 
her,  as  the  merit  of  saving  her  soul."  4 

Very  much  of  his  journal,  especially  the  earlier  portion 
of  it,  is  taken  up  with  sarcastic  comments  upon  North 
Carolina,  —  its  backwardness  in  civilization,  the  idleness, 
ignorance,  and  poverty  of  its  inhabitants  ;  he  heaps  in- 
numerable jokes  upon  them.  Some  of  the  people,  he  says, 
were  sunken  into  absolute  savagery.  He  tells  of  a  poor 
wretch  on  the  South  Shore,  —  "  a  Marooner,  that  modestly 
called  himself  a  hermit,  though  he  forfeited  that  name  by- 
suffering  a  wanton  female  to  cohabit  with  him.  His  habi- 
tation was  a  bower  covered  with  bark  after  the  Indian 
fashion.  .  .  .  Like  the  ravens,  he  neither  ploughed  nor 


"  Byrd  Manuscripts."  I.  4.         *  Ibid.  5.          *  Ibid.  $  *  Ibid.  77- 

VOL.  ii.—  18 


774  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

sowed,  but  subsisted  chiefly  upon  oysters,  which  his  hand- 
maid made  a  shift  to  gather  from  the  adjacent  rocks. 
Sometimes,  too,  for  change  of  diet,  he  sent  her  to  drive 
up  the  neighbors'  cows,  to  moisten  their  mouths  with  a 
little  milk.  But  as  for  raiment,  he  depended  mostly  upon 
his  length  of  beard,  and  she  upon  her  length  of  hair,  part 
of  which  she  brought  decently  forward,  and  the  rest  dan- 
gled behind  quite  down  to  her  rump,  like  one  of  Herodo- 
tus's  East  Indian  Pigmies.  Thus  did  these  wretches  live 
in  a  dirty  state  of  nature,  and  were  mere  Adamites,  inno- 
cence only  excepted."  1 

He  has  many  sarcasms  on  the  irreligion  of  North  Caro- 
lina :  "  'Tis  natural  for  helpless  man  to  adore  his  Maker  in 
some  form  or  other ;  and  were  there  any  exception  to  this 
rule,  I  should  suspect  it  to  be  among  the  Hottentots  of 
the  Cape  of  Good  Hope  and  of  North  Carolina." 2  The 
religious  service  held  there  by  the  chaplain  of  the  Virginia 
party,  "  was  quite  a  new  thing  to  our  brethren  of  North 
Carolina,  who  live  in  a  climate  where  no  clergyman  can 
breathe,  any  more  than  spiders  in  Ireland."3  "They  ac- 
count it  among  their  greatest  advantages  that  they  are  not 
priestridden,  not  remembering  that  the  clergy  is  rarely 
guilty  of  bestriding  such  as  have  the  misfortune  to  be 
poor."4  "One  thing  may  be  said  for  the  inhabitants  of 
that  province,  that  they  are  not  troubled  with  any  re- 
ligious fumes,  and  have  the  least  superstition  of  any  people 
living.  They  do  not  know  Sunday  from  any  other  day, 
any  more  than  Robinson  Crusoe  did  ;  which  would  give 
them  a  great  advantage,  were  they  given  to  be  industrious. 
But  they  keep  so  many  Sabbaths  every  week,  that  their 
disregard  of  the  seventh  day  has  no  manner  of  cruelty  in 
it,  either  to  servants  or  cattle."  5  He  suggests  that,  once  in 
two  or  three  years,  the  clergy  of  Virginia  should  "  vouch- 
safe to  take  a  turn  among  these  gentiles.  .  .  .  Twould 

'  "  Byrd  Manuscripts,"  I.  26-27.  *  Ibid.  43.  8  Ibid.  44. 

«  Ibid.  44.  6  Ibid.  44-45. 


WILLIAM  B  YRD.  275 

look  a  little  apostolical ;  and  they  might  hope  to  be  re- 
quited for  it  hereafter, — if  that  be  not  thought  too  long  to 
tarry  for  their  reward."  ' 

He  has  occasion  to  speak  of  Edenton,  the  capital  of 
North  Carolina,  which  he  describes  as  consisting  of  "  forty 
or  fifty  houses,  most  of  them  small  and  built  without  ex- 
pense. A  citizen  here  is  counted  extravagant  if  he  has 
ambition  enough  to  aspire  to  a  brick-chimney.  Justice 
herself  is  but  indifferently  lodged,  the  court-house  having 
much  the  air  of  a  common  tobacco-house.  I  believe  this 
is  the  only  metropolis  in  the  Christian  or  Mohammedan 
world,  where  there  is  neither  church,  chapel,  mosque,  syna- 
gogue, or  any  other  place  of  public  worship,  of  any  sect  or 
religion  whatsoever."2  In  North  Carolina,  "they  pay  no 
tribute,  either  to  God  or  to  Caesar."  8 

As  to  food,  "  provisions  here  are  extremely  cheap,  and 
extremely  good ;  so  that  people  may  live  plentifully  at  a 
trifling  expense.  Nothing  is  dear  but  law,  physic,  and 
strong  drink,  which  are  all  bad  in  their  kind,  and  the  last 
they  get  with  so  much  difficulty,  that  they  are  never  guilty 
of  the  sin  of  suffering  it  to  sour  upon  their  hands."4  He 
does,  however,  criticise  their  excessive  use  of  pork:  "The 
truth  of  it  is,  the  inhabitants  of  North  Carolina  devour  so 
much  swine's  flesh,  that  it  fills  them  full  of  gross  humors. 
.  .  .  They  are  commonly  obliged  to  eat  it  fresh,  and  that 
begets  the  highest  taint  of  scurvy."  This  disease  often 
develops  into  a  worse  one, — "  the  yaws,  called  there  very 
justly  the  country-distemper.  .  .  .  First  it  seizes  the  throat, 
next  the  palate,  and  lastly  shows  its  spite  to  the  poor  nose, 
of  which  'tis  apt,  in  a  small  time,  treacherously  to  under- 
mine the  foundation.  This  calamity  is  so  common  and 
familiar  here,  that  it  ceases  to  be  a  scandal ;  and  in  the  dis- 
putes that  happen  about  beauty,  the  Noses  have  in  some 
companies  much  ado  to  carry  it.  Nay,  'tis  said  that  once, 
after  three  good  pork  years,  a  motion  had  like  to  have  been 

1  "  Byrd  Manuscripts,"  I.  64.         »  Ibid.  59.         »  Ibid.  65.         «  Ibid.  60. 


2/6  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

made  in  the  house  of  burgesses,  that  a  man  with  a  nose 
should  be  incapable  of  holding  any  place  of  profit  in  the 
province;  which  extraordinary  motion  could  never  have 
been  intended  without  some  hopes  of  a  majority."1 

He  amuses  himself,  likewise,  over  the  indolence  of  the 
people.  He  speaks  of  "the  Carolina  felicity  of  having 
nothing  to  do."2  Drones  are  common  in  North  Carolina, 
but  they  are  all  men ;  the  women  "  spin,  weave,  and  knit, 
all  with  their  own  hands,  while  their  husbands,  depending 
on  the  bounty  of  the  climate,  are  slothful  in  everything  but 
getting  of  children,  and  in  that  only  instance  make  them- 
selves useful  members  of  an  infant-colony."3  The  men 
"  make  their  wives  rise  out  of  their  beds  early  in  the  morn- 
ing, at  the  same  time  that  they  lie  and  snore,  till  the  sun 
has  run  one-third  of  his  course,  and  dispersed  all  the  un- 
wholesome damps.  Then,  after  stretching  and  yawning 
for  half  an  hour,  they  light  their  pipes,  and  under  the 
protection  of  a  cloud  of  smoke  venture  out  into  the  open 
air;  though,  if  it  happens  to  be  never  so  little  cold,  they 
quickly  return  shivering  into  the  chimney  corner.  When 
the  weather  is  mild,  they  stand  leaning  with  both  their  arms 
upon  the  cornfield  fence,  and  gravely  consider  whether 
they  had  best  go  and  take  a  small  heat  at  the  hoe,  but 
generally  find  reasons  to  put  it  off  till  another  time.  Thus, 
they  loiter  away  their  lives,  like  Solomon's  sluggard,  with 
their  arms  across,  and  at  the  winding  up  of  the  year  scarcely 
have  bread  to  eat." 4 

As  the  expedition  moves  westward,  the  author's  atten- 
tion is  taken  up  by  other  things  than  the  drolleries  of 
North  Carolina  society ;  and  he  jots  down  admirable 
notices  of  rare  plants  and  animals,  racy  sketches  of  Indian 
character,  amusing  stories  of  forest-adventure,  a  learned 
digression  upon  music,  and  vivacious  pictures  of  the  coun- 
try through  which  they  pass.  He  becomes  a  great  enthusi- 
ast over  the  virtues  of  the  plant,  ginseng :  "  Though  prac- 

1  "Byrd  Manuscripts,"  I.  32-33.      3  Ibid.  60.      •  Ibid.  41.      4  Ibid.  56-5?- 


WILLIAM  BYRD.  2/7 

tice  will  soon  make  a  man  of  tolerable  vigor  an  able  foot- 
man, yet,  as  a  help  to  bear  fatigue,  I  used  to  chew  a  root 
of  ginseng  as  I  walked  along.  This  kept  up  my  spirits,  and 
made  me  trip  away  as  nimbly  in  my  half  jack-boots  as 
younger  men  could  in  their  shoes.  This  plant  is  in  high 
esteem  in  China,  where  it  sells  for  its  weight  in  silver. 
.  .  .  Indeed,  it  is  a  vegetable  of  so  many  virtues,  that 
Providence  has  planted  it  very  thin  in  every  country  that 
has  the  happiness  to  produce  it.  Nor,  indeed,  is  mankind 
worthy  of  so  great  a  blessing,  since  health  and  long  life 
are  commonly  abused  to  ill  purposes.  ...  Its  virtues  are, 
that  it  gives  an  uncommon  warmth  and  vigor  to  the  blood, 
and  frisks  the  spirits  beyond  any  other  cordial.  It  cheers 
the  heart  even  of  a  man  that  has  a  bad  wife,  and  makes 
him  look  down  with  great  composure  on  the  crosses  of  the 
world.  It  promotes  insensible  perspiration,  dissolves  all 
phlegmatic  and  viscous  humors  that  are  apt  to  obstruct 
the  narrow  channels  of  the  nerves.  It  helps  the  memory, 
and  would  quicken  even  Helvetian  dulness.  Tis  friendly 
to  the  lungs,  much  more  than  scolding  itself.  It  com- 
forts the  stomach,  and  strengthens  the  bowels,  preventing 
all  colics  and  fluxes.  In  one  word,  it  will  make  a  man  live 
a  great  while,  and  very  well  while  he  does  live.  And  what 
is  more,  it  will  make  even  old  age  amiable,  by  rendering  it 
lively,  cheerful,  and  good  humored." 1 

Three  years  after  these  journeys  across  the  debatable 
ground  between  Virginia  and  North  Carolina,  the  author 
made  another  journey,  of  much  less  difficulty  and  of  much 
less  public  importance,  the  leading  incidents  of  which  he 
has  chronicled  in  some  very  piquant  and  charming  memo- 
randa, entitled  "A  Progress  to  the  Mines."2  In  the 
autumn  of  the  following  year,  1733,  with  a  party  of  four 
gentlemen,  five  woodmen,  four  negroes,  and  three  Indians, 
he  made  a  journey  to  a  vast  tract  of  land  owned  by  him, 
near  the  River  Dan  in  North  Carolina.  His  diary  of  this 

1  "  Byrd  Manuscripts,"  I.  161-162.  '  Ibid.  II.  41-8*- 


278  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

expedition  is  called  "A  Journey  to  the  Land  of  Eden,"1 
the  latter  phrase  being  the  somewhat  ironical  name  of  the 
region  referred  to.  Both  of  these  narratives  are  full  of 
merriment ;  nearly  every  sentence  has  some  jovial  touch  ; 
and  pervading  all,  is  the  perfect  and  ingrained  gentleman- 
liness  of  the  writer.  One  day,  he  arrived  at  a  place  where 
were  two  mills  belonging  to  himself :  "  I  had  the  grief  to 
find  them  both  stand  as  still  for  the  want  of  water,  as  a 
dead  woman's  tongue,  for  want  of  breath." 2  At  one  house 
he  was  detained  for  a  day  or  two  on  account  of  bad 
weather;  and  in  his  account  of  the  way  in  which  he  and 
his  friends  amused  themselves  during  their  imprisonment, 
by  reading  the  second  part  of  "  The  Beggars'  Opera," 
which  he  found  in  that  remote  Virginia  mansion,  we  catch 
a  glimpse  of  the  early  presence  of  the  Queen  Anne  writers 
even  in  our  American  forests,  as  well  as  of  William  Byrd's 
familiar  acquaintance  with  the  current  literary  gossip  of 
London.3  Continuing  that  journey  under  a  premise  of  bet- 
ter weather,  he  mentions  his  arrival  at  "the  homely  dwell- 
ing of  the  Reverend  Mr.  Marij,"  by  "  a  path  as  narrow  as 
that  which  leads  to  heaven,  but  much  more  dirty."4  Fur- 
ther on,  he  tells  how,  one  night,  himself  and  another  gen- 
tleman, after  positively  declaring  against  it,  were  induced 
by  the  ladies  of  the  house  to  eat  a  hearty  supper, — upon 
which  he  has  this  comment :  "  So  very  pliable  a  thing  is 
frail  man,  when  women  have  the  bending  of  him."5  He  was 
a  devout  Churchman,  and  a  faithful  friend  of  the  clergy  of 
Virginia;  and  for  the  latter  he  shows  his  good-will  by 
never  missing  an  opportunity  of  playfully  remarking  upon 
their  personal  and  professional  characteristics.  Thus,  of  a 
visit  one  Sunday  to  Brunswick  church  :  "  Mr.  Betty,  the 
parson  of  the  parish,  entertained  us  with  a  good,  honest 
sermon  ;  but  whether  he  bought  it,  or  borrowed  it,  would 
have  been  uncivil  in  us  to  inquire.  Be  that  as  it  will,  he 

1  "  Byrd  Manuscripts,"  II.  1-39.  »  Ibid.  41.  »  Ibid.  47-4*. 

4  Ibid.  48.  •  Ibid.  67. 


WILLIAM  STITH.  ^ 

is  a  decent  man,  with  a  double  chin  that  fits  gracefully 
over  his  band,  and  his  parish,  especially  the  female  part  of 
it,  like  him  well.  .  .  .  When  church  was  done,  we  refreshed 
our  teacher  with  a  glass  of  wine,  and  then  receiving  his 
blessing,  took  horse  and  directed  our  course  to  Major 
Embry's." l 

V. 

WILLIAM  STITH,  who  was  born  in  Virginia  in  1689  and 
died  in  1755,  began  late  in  his  life  to  write  the  history  of 
that  colony;  being  particularly  moved  to  the  task  by 
noticing  "  how  empty  and  unsatisfactory  "  was  everything 
at  that  time  published  upon  the  subject,  excepting,  as  he 
said,  "  the  excellent  but  confused  materials  "  of  Captain 
John  Smith.2  He  had  been  a  busy  person  in  his  day, — 
clergyman,  master  of  the  grammar  school  of  William  and 
Mary  College,  chaplain  of  the  house  of  burgesses,  presi- 
dent of  the  college,  and  man  of  public  utility  in  gen- 
eral. Being  related  to  several  of  the  most  eminent  fami- 
lies in  Virginia,  and  in  constant  association  with  its  leading 
men,  he  was  from  his  youth  familiar  with  all  its  historical 
traditions ;  he  had  access  to  many  rare  manuscripts  relat- 
ing to  its  past ;  and,  finally,  he  had  won  for  himself  "  per- 
fect leisure  and  retirement."  All  things  seemed  to  favor 
his  ambition  to  give  to  Virginia  what  it  greatly  needed — a 
history  of  itself.  "  Such  a  work,"  said  he, "  will  be  a  noble 
and  elegant  entertainment  for  my  vacant  hours,  which  it 
is  not  in  my  power  to  employ  more  to  my  own  satisfac- 
tion, or  the  use  and  benefit  of  my  country."  s  According- 
ly, in  1747,  he  published  at  Williamsburg,  in  a  volume  of 
three  hundred  and  thirty-one  pages,  the  first  part  of  "  The 
History  of  the  First  Discovery  and  Settlement  of  Vir- 
ginia," carrying  the  narrative  down  only  to  the  year  1624. 
Though  he  lived  eight  years  longer,  this  first  part  of  his 


"  Byrd  Manuscripts,"  II.  34-         '  "  Hist.  Va."  Pref.  Hi.        '  Ibid.  ir. 


28O  HISTORY  OF  AMERICAN  LITER  A  TURE. 

history  proved  to  be  also  its  last  part.1  The  book  is  not  ill 
written.  It  is,  indeed,  projected  upon  a  scale  too  large  for 
its  subject ;  it  fills  up  the  canvas  with  small  incidents ;  it 
seeks  to  give  historical  memory  to  the  petty  doings  of  poli- 
ticians, pioneers,  and  savages,  that  carry  in  themselves  the 
necessity  of  being  forgotten.  Nevertheless,  while  the  in- 
terest of  the  story  is  often  swamped  in  a  deluge  of  details, 
and  the  whole  book  is  a  sin  against  artistic  proportion  and 
the  limits  of  human  life,  the  reader  will  be  likely  to  pro- 
nounce unjust  the  verdict  of  Thomas  Jefferson,2  who  says 
that  Stith,  though  "  very  exact,"  had  "  no  taste  in  style," 
and  that  his  writing  is  "  inelegant."  The  author  founds  his 
work  chiefly  upon  the  narratives  of  Captain  John  Smith, 
in  whom  he  confides  with  a  blissful  faith  that  is  now  amus- 
ing: "  I  take  him  to  have  been  a  very  honest  man  and  a 
strenuous  lover  of  truth." 3  The  historian  protests  his- 
own  impartiality :  "  I  declare  myself  to  be  of  no  party,  but 
have  labored  solely  with  a  vie\y  to  find  out  and  relate  the 
truth."  *  Yet  his  account  of  the  early  governor,  Samuel 
Argall,  is  so  hostile  that  he  has  been  accused  of  yielding 
unduly  to  partisan  documents  against  that  personage,  and 
even  of  adding  "  bitter  and  groundless  accusations  of  his 
own."5  Against  King  James  the  First,  who  vexed  the 
affairs  of  the  colony  by  his  ceaseless  and  senseless  inter- 
ference, the  historian  speaks  with  a  frankness  of  contempt 
that  leaves  an  unwonted  animation  upon  his  pages:  "If 
more  than  a  century  is  not  enough  to  un-Solomonize  that 
silly  monarch,  I  must  give  up  all  my  notions  of  things. 
...  I  take  it  to  be  the  main  part  of  the  duty  and  office 
of  an  historian,  to  paint  men  and  things  in  their  true  and 
lively  colors  ;  and  to  do  that  justice  to  the  vices  and  follies 
of  princes  and  great  men  after  their  death,  which  it  is  not 
safe  or  proper  to  do  whilst  they  are  alive.  And  herein,  as 

1  The  only  other  publication  of  his  that  I  can  hear  of,  is  a  sermon  on  "  The 
Nature  and  Extent  of  Christ's  Redemption,"  Williamsburg,  1753. 
»  "  Complete  Works,"  VIII.  415.       *  "  Hist.  Va."  Pref.  iv. 
4  Ibid.  vii.  •  4  Mass.  Hist.  Soc.  Coll.  IX.  5,  note. 


WILLIAM  STITH.  28l 

I  judge,  chiefly  consist  the  strength  and  excellency  of 
Tacitus  and  Suetonius.  Their  style  and  manner  are  far 
inferior  to  Livy's,  and  the  writers  of  the  Julian  and  Augus- 
tan ages ;  but  they  have  more  than  painted  and  exposed 
alive  to  view  the  greatest  train  of  monsters  that  ever  dis- 
graced a  throne,  or  did  dishonor  to  human  nature.  .  .  . 
King  James  the  First  fell,  indeed,  far  short  of  the  Caesars' 
superlative  wickedness  and  supremacy  in  vice.  He  was  at 
best  only  very  simple  and  injudicious,  without  any  steady 
principle  of  justice  and  honor;  which  was  rendered  the 
more  odious  and  ridiculous  by  his  large  and  constant  pre- 
tensions to  wisdom  and  virtue.  And  he  had,  in  truth,  all 
the  forms  of  wisdom, — forever  erring  very  learnedly,  with  a 
wise  saw  or  Latin  sentence  in  his  mouth  ;  for  he  had  been 
bred  up  under  Buchanan,  one  of  the  brightest  geniuses 
and  most  accomplished  scholars  of  that  age,  who  had 
given  him  Greek  and  Latin  in  great  waste  and  profusion — 
but  it  was  not  in  his  power  to  give  him  good  sense.  That 
is  the  gift  of  God  and  nature  alone,  and  is  not  to  be 
taught ;  and  Greek  and  Latin  without  it  only  cumber  and 
overload  a  weak  head,  and  often  render  the  fool  more 
abundantly  foolish.  I  must,  therefore,  confess  that  I  have 
ever  had,  from  my  first  acquaintance  with  history,  a  most 
contemptible  opinion  of  this  monarch  ;  which  has  perhaps 
been  much  heightened  and  increased  by  my  long  studying 
and  conning  over  the  materials  of  this  history.  For  he 
appears  in  his  dealings  with  the  company  to  have  acted 
with  such  mean  arts  and  fraud,  and  such  little  tricking,  as 
highly  misbecome  majesty.  And  I  am  much  mistaken  if  his 
arbitrary  proceedings  and  unjust  designs  will  appear  from 
any  part  of  his  history  more  fully  than  from  these  trans- 
actions with  the  company  and  colony.  ...  I  think  and 
speak  of  him  with  the  same  freedom  and  indifferency  that 
I  would  think  and  speak  of  any  other  man  long  since 
dead ;  and  therefore  I  have  no  way  restrained  my  style 
in  freely  exposing  his  weak  and  injurious  proceedings."  l 

i  "  Hist  Va."  Pref.  vi-viL 


282  HISTOR  y  OF  AMERICAN  LITER  A  TURE. 

A  good  example  of  Stith's  descriptive  manner  is  his 
account  of  the  dreadful  massacre  of  the  white  people  in 
Virginia  by  the  Indians,  in  1622 — a  passage  of  genuine 
dignity,  pathos,  and  graphic  power.1 


3.   NORTH   CAROLINA. 
I. 

"In  the  year  1700,"  writes  a  genial  and  enterprising 
young  Englishman  named  John  Lawson,2  "  when  people 
flocked  from  all  parts  of  the  Christian  world  to  see  the 
solemnity  of  the  grand  jubilee  at  Rome,  my  intention  at 
that  time  being  to  travel,  I  accidentally  met  with  a  gentle, 
man  who  had  been  abroad  and  was  very  well  acquainted 
with  the  ways  of  living  in  both  Indies ;  of  whom  hav- 
ing made  inquiry  concerning  them,  he  assured  me  that 
Carolina  was  the  best  country  I  could  go  to,  and  that 
there  then  lay  a  ship  in  the  Thames  in  which  I  might  have 
my  passage.  I  laid  hold  on  this  opportunity,  and  was  not 
long  on  board  before  we  fell  down  the  river  and  sailed  to 
Cowes,  where  having  taken  in  some  passengers  we  pro- 
ceeded on  our  voyage."  Thus  a  very  useful  and  notable 
man  found  his  way  to  the  new  world,  arriving  at  Charles- 
ton, South  Carolina,  early  in  September,  1700.  Of  this 
place  and  its  people,  just  as  they  appeared  to  him  in  that 
closing  year  of  the  seventeenth  century,  he  has  left  us  a 
goodly  picture :  "  The  town  has  very  regular  and  fair 
streets,  in  which  are  good  buildings  of  brick  and  wood  ; 
and  since  my  coming  thence,  has  had  great  additions  of 
beautiful,  large  brick  buildings,  besides  a  strong  fort  and 
regular  fortifications  made  to  defend  the  town.  The  in- 
habitants, by  their  wise  management  and  industry,  have 
much  improved  the  country,  which  is  in  as  thriving  circum- 
stances at  this  time  as  any  colony  on  the  continent  of  Eng- 

1  "  Hist.  Va."  208-212.  *  "  Hist  N.  C."  Introd.  xL 


JOHN  LA  WSON.  2g3 

lish  America.  .  .  .  They  have  a  considerable  trade  both  to 
Europe  and  to  the  West  Indies,  whereby  they  become  rich. 
.  .  .  Their  cohabiting  in  a  town  has  drawn  to  them  ingen- 
ious people  of  most  sciences,  whereby  they  have  tutors 
amongst  them,  that  educate  their  youth  alamode.  .  .  . 
All  enjoy  at  this  day  an  entire  liberty  of  their  worship ; 
...  it  being  the  lord-proprietors'  intent  that  the  inhabi- 
tants of  Carolina  should  be  as  free  from  oppression  as  any 
in  the  universe.  .  .  .  They  have  a  well-disciplined  militia. 
.  .  .  Their  officers,  both  infantry  and  cavalry,  generally 
appear  in  scarlet  mountings,  and  as  rich  as  in  most  regi- 
ments belonging  to  the  crown,  which  shows  the  richness 
and  grandeur  of  this  colony.  They  are  a  frontier,  and 
prove  such  troublesome  neighbors  to  the  Spaniards,  that 
they  have  once  laid  their  town  of  St.  Augustine  in  ashes, 
and  drove  away  their  cattle.  .  .  The  merchants  of  Caro- 
lina are  fair,  frank  traders.  The  gentlemen  seated  in  the 
country  are  very  courteous,  live  very  noble  in  their  houses, 
and  give  very  genteel  entertainment  to  all  strangers  and 
others  that  come  to  visit  them."  ' 

After  staying  in  this  delightful  community  nearly  four 
months,  the  young  immigrant  determined,  for  some  reason, 
to  seek  his  fortunes  in  North  Carolina;  and  on  the  third 
day  after  Christmas,  1700,  he  began  his  voyage  thither 
along  the  coast,  going  in  a  large  canoe,  and  having  in  his 
company  five  white  men  and  four  Indians.  Upon  this 
journey,  he  went  by  sea  only  as  far  as  the  Santee  river;  he 
then  struck  inland  and  wandered  in  zigzag  fashion  toward 
the  north,  paddling  up  rivers  or  wading  across  them,  push- 
ing through  highlands  and  morasses,  among  savages,  ser- 
pents, wild  beasts,  and  white  pioneers,  and  encountering 
in  good  humor  all  manner  of  hardships  and  perils.  This 
long  strain  of  travel  in  those  woods,  in  those  times,  proved 
altogether  a  revelation  to  John  Lawson,  fresh  and  tender 
from  the  beatitudes  of  a  civilized  English  home;  and  he 

»  "  Hist.  N.  C."  Introd.  xiii-xriL 


284  IflSTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITER  A  TURE. 

had  the  good  sense  to  keep  a  faithful  record  of  it.  He  put 
down  on  paper  what  he  saw  and  experienced  day  by  day 
as  he  went  along :  mishaps,  prosperities ;  descriptions  of 
the  country,  rivers,  plants,  trees,  animals;  their  own  talk 
by  the  way;  their  occasional  entertainment  in  the  hovels 
of  white  settlers  and  of  Indians;  especially  such  traits  of 
the  latter  as  seemed  to  him  novel,  picturesque,  or  amusing. 
He  is  particularly  minute  and  facetious  in  his  account 
of  the  Indian  women  that  they  met ;  telling  some  broad 
stories  of  the  intrigues  of  his  own  party  with  these  tawny 
beauties, — wherein  the  supposed  distinction  in  morals  be- 
tween Christian  and  pagan  seems  to  become  effaced,  or,  if 
possible,  to  be  in  favor  of  the  pagan.  At  last,  however, 
after  "a  thousand  miles'  travel  among  the  Indians,"  he 
and  his  associates  arrived  safe  in  North  Carolina ;  "  where," 
he  says,  "  being  well  received  by  the  inhabitants  and  pleased 
with  the  goodness  of  the  country,  we  all  resolved  to  con- 
tinue."1 

A  man  of  John  Lawson's  intelligence  was  of  course  a 
boon  to  that  colony.  He  was  especially  useful  by  his 
ability  to  survey  land.  Accordingly,  they  soon  made  him 
their  surveyor-general ;  and  for  the  next  twelve  years  he 
was  kept  busy  in  that  function,  going  in  every  direction 
through  the  wilderness,  and  having  his  eyes  open  all  the 
time  for  information  about  man  and  nature — much  of 
which  he  carefully  noted  down  in  his  journal.  He  had 
some  skill  in  natural  history,  and  compiled  minute  descrip- 
tions of  birds,  fishes,  beasts,  minerals,  and  the  flora  of  the 
country.  The  country  itself,  however,  its  beauty  and  fer- 
tility, and  the  charms  of  its  climate,  bred  in  him  an  en- 
thusiasm. Its  coast,  he  tells  us,  in  fine  imagery,  is  "a 
chain  of  sand-banks,  which  defends  it  from  the  violence 
and  insults  of  the  Atlantic  ocean ;  by  which  barrier  a  vast 
sound  is  hemmed  in,  which  fronts  the  mouths  of  the  nav- 
igable and  pleasant  rivers  of  this  fertile  country,  and  into 

'  "  Hist.  N.  C."  105. 


JOHN  LA  WSON. 


285 


which  they  disgorge  themselves." !  He  gives  a  picture  of 
the  spot  where  the  first  hapless  colonists  sent  by  Sir  Walter 
Raleigh  had  their  fatal  residence ;  and  he  adds  to  it  this 
sweet  and  poetic  story  "that  passes  for  an  uncontested 
truth  amongst  the  inhabitants  of  this  place,  .  .  .  that  the 
ship  which  brought  the  first  colonists  does  often  appear 
amongst  them,  under  sail,  in  a  gallant  posture,  which  they 
call  Sir  Walter  Raleigh's  ship."1 

As  to  North  Carolina,  it  is  "  a  delicious  country,  being 
placed  in  that  girdle  of  the  world  which  affords  wine,  oil, 
fruit,  grain,  and  silk,  with  other  rich  commodities,  besides 
a  sweet  air,  moderate  climate,  and  fertile  soil.  These  are 
the  blessings,  under  Heaven's  protection,  that  spin  out  the 
thread  of  life  to  its  utmost  extent,  and  crown  our  days 
with  the  sweets  of  health  and  plenty,  which,  when  joined 
with  content,  renders  the  possessors  the  happiest  race  of 
men  upon  earth.  The  inhabitants  of  Carolina,  through 
the  richness  of  the  soil,  live  an  easy  and  pleasant  life ;  the 
land  being  of  several  sorts  of  compost ;  .  .  .  one  part  bear- 
ing great  timbers;  others  being  savannahs  or  natural 
meads,  where  no  trees  grow  for  several  miles,  adorned  by 
nature  with  a  pleasant  verdure  and  beautiful  flowers,  .  .  . 
yielding  abundance  of  herbage  for  cattle,  sheep,  and 
horses.  The  country  in  general  affords  pleasant  seats,  the 
land,  except  in  some  few  places,  being  dry  and  high  banks, 
parcelled  out  into  most  convenient  necks  by  the  creeks ; 
.  .  .  whereby,  with  a  small  trouble  of  fencing,  almost  every 
man  may  enjoy  to  himself  an  entire  plantation,  or  rather 
park.  ...  I  may  say  the  universe  does  not  afford  such 
another."  * 

In  his  office  of  colonial  surveyor  he  often  had  to  live  a 
rough  and  solitary  life  in  the  far-off  woods ;  and  his  ex- 
perience was  fruitful  in  adventures,  instructive  and  amus- 
ing for  him  and  for  us.  Thus,  in  giving  a  description  of 
the  alligator,  he  narrates  this  incident,  which  occurred  at 

1  M  Hut.  N.  C."  107.  «  Ibid.  109.  « Ibid.  135-136. 


2  86  HIS  TOR  Y  OF  A  ME  RICA  N  LI  TERA  TURE. 

an  early  period  of  his  residence  in  North  Carolina,  and 
before  he  had  become  intimately  acquainted  with  the 
playful  ways  of  that  interesting  monster :  "  This  animal 
in  these  parts  sometimes  exceeds  seventeen  feet  long.  It 
is  impossible  to  kill  them  with  a  gun,  unless  you  chance  to 
hit  them  about  the  eyes,  which  is  a  much  softer  place 
than  the  rest  of  their  impenetrable  armor.  They  roar  and 
make  a  hideous  noise  against  bad  weather,  and  before  they 
come  out  of  their  dens  in  the  spring.  I  was  pretty  much 
frightened  with  one  of  these  once.  ...  I  had  built  a  house 
about  a  mile  from  an  Indian  town  on  the  fork  of  Neuse 
River,  where  I  dwelt  by  myself,  excepting  a  young  Indian 
fellow,  and  a  bull  dog  that  I  had  along  with  me.  I  had 
not  then  been  so  long  a  sojourner  in  America  as  to  be 
thoroughly  acquainted  with  this  creature.  One  of  them 
had  got  his  nest  directly  under  my  house,  which  stood  on 
pretty  high  land  and  by  a  creek  side,  in  whose  banks  his 
entering-place  was,  his  den  reaching  the  ground  directly 
on  which  my  house  stood.  I  was  sitting  alone  by  the 
fireside,  about  nine  o'clock  at  night,  sometime  in  March, 
the  Indian  fellow  being  gone  to  the  town  to  see  his  rela- 
tions, so  that  there  was  nobody  in  the  house  but  myself  and 
my  dog;  when,  all  of  a  sudden,  this  ill-favored  neighbor  of 
mine  set  up  such  a  roaring,  that  he  made  the  house  shake 
about  my  ears.  .  .  .  The  dog  stared  as  if  he  was  frightened 
out  of  his  senses  ;  nor  indeed  could  I  imagine  what  it  was. 
.  .  .  Immediately  again  I  had  another  lesson,  and  so  a 
third.  Being  at  that  time  amongst  none  but  savages,  I 
began  to  suspect  they  were  working  some  piece  of  conju- 
ration under  my  house,  to  get  away  my  goods.  ...  At 
last  my  man  came  in,  to  whom  when  I  had  told  the  story, 
he  laughed  at  me  and  presently  undeceived  me." ' 

Of  course  he  had  great  opportunities  of  studying  the 
Indians,  whom  he  always  speaks  of  with  a  sort  of  gentle 
liking,  especially  their  women.  Among  the  latter,  he  says, 


Hist.  N.  C."  209-210. 


JOHN  LA  WSOff.  287 

"it  seems  impossible  to  find  a  scold ;  if  they  are  provoked 
or  affronted  by  their  husbands  or  some  other,  they  resent 
the  indignity  offered  them  in  silent  tears,  or  by  refusing 
their  meat.  Would  some  of  our  European  daughters  of 
thunder  set  these  Indians  for  a  pattern,  there  might  be 
more  quiet  families  found  amongst  them." l  "  When  young 
and  at  maturity,  they  are  as  fine-shaped  creatures  ...  as 
any  in  the  universe.  They  are  of  a  tawny  complexion ; 
their  eyes  very  brisk  and  amorous  ;  their  smiles  afford  the 
finest  composure  a  face  can  possess ;  their  hands  are  of  the 
finest  make  with  small,  long  fingers,  and  as  soft  as  their 
cheeks  ;  and  their  whole  bodies  of  a  smooth  nature.  They 
are  not  so  uncouth  ...  as  we  suppose  them,  nor  are  they 
strangers  or  not  proficients  in  the  soft  passion.  .  .  .  As  for 
the  report  that  they  are  never  found  unconstant,  like  the 
Europeans,  it  is  wholly  false ;  for  were  the  old  world  and 
the  new  one  put  into  a  pair  of  scales,  in  point  of  con- 
stancy, it  would  be  a  hard  matter  to  discern  which  was 
the  heavier."  *  '*  The  woman  is  not  punished  for  adultery ; 
but  'tis  the  man  that  makes  the  injured  person  satisfaction. 
.  .  .  The  Indians  say  that  the  woman  is  a  weak  creature 
and  easily  drawn  away  by  the  man's  persuasion  ;  for  which 
reason,  they  lay  no  blame  upon  her,  but  the  man  (that 
ought  to  be  master  of  his  passion)  for  persuading  her  to  it."  * 
At  one  time  he  saw  this  prodigy  amongst  the  Indians, — 
"  the  strangest  spectacle  of  antiquity  I  ever  knew,  it  being 
an  old  Indian  squaw,  that,  had  I  been  to  have  guessed  at 
her  age  by  her  aspect,  old  Parr's  head  (the  Welsh  Methu- 
salem)  was  a  face  in  swaddling  clouts  to  hers.  Her  skin 
hung  in  reaves,  like  a  bag  of  tripe.  By  a  fair  computation, 
one  might  have  justly  thought  it  would  have  contained 
three  such  carcasses  as  hers  then  was.  ...  By  what  I 
could  gather  she  was  considerably  above  one  hundred 
years  old,  notwithstanding  she  smoked  tobacco  and  eat  her 
victuals,  ...  as  heartily  as  one  of  eighteen." 4 

1 "  Hist.  N.  C."  67.          »  Ibid.  299.          » Ibid.  306.         «  Ibid.  55. 


288  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITER  A  TURE. 

He  tells  in  another  place  of  an  interview  with  the  king 
of  the  Santee  Indians,  who  came  to  him  attended  by  his 
conjuror,  or  doctor, — the  latter  being  a  shrewd  quack  re- 
markably successful,  like  his  brethren  in  Christendom,  in 
living  upon  the  credulity  of  his  victims.  This  doctor  him- 
self had  in  former  time  been  afflicted  with  a  certain  dan- 
gerous and  disreputable  disease;  and  in  order  to  treat 
himself  for  it  in  secret,  he  had  withdrawn  into  the  woods, 
having  with  him  but  a  single  companion,  who  was  suffer- 
ing from  the  same  distemper.  The  conjuror  succeeded  in 
effecting  a  cure  for  both  of  them,  but  only  at  the  expense 
of  the  noses  of  both  ;  and,  at  last,  "  coming  again  amongst 
their  old  acquaintance  so  disfigured,  the  Indians  admired 
to  see  them  metamorphosed  after  that  manner,  inquired 
of  them  where  they  had  been  all  that  time,  and  what  were 
become  of  their  noses.  They  made  answer  that  they  had 
been  conversing  with  the  white  man  above — meaning  God 
Almighty ;  ...  he  being  much  pleased  with  their  ways, 
.  .  .  had  promised  to  make  their  capacities  equal  with  the 
white  people  in  making  guns,  ammunition,  and  so  forth ; 
in  retaliation  of  which,  they  had  given  him  their  noses. 
The  verity  of  which  they  yet  hold." 1 

The  author  greatly  admired  the  dignity  and  self-con- 
tained power  of  the  Indians:  "Their  eyes  are  commonly 
full  and  manly,  and  their  gait  sedate  and  majestic.  They 
never  walk  backward  and  forward  as  we  do,  nor  contem- 
plate on  the  affairs  of  loss  and  gain,  the  things  which  daily 
perplex  us.  They  are  dexterous  and  steady,  both  as  to 
their  hands  and  feet,  to  admiration.  They  will  walk  over 
deep  brooks  and  creeks  on  the  smallest  poles,  and  that 
without  any  fear  or  concern.  Nay,  an  Indian  will  walk  on 
the  ridge  of  a  barn  or  house,  and  look  down  the  gable  end, 
and  spit  upon  the  ground,  as  unconcerned  as  if  he  was 
walking  on  terra  firma."2 

The   fate  of  this  admirable  observer  was  sufficiently 

'"Hist.  N.  C."  37-40.  'Ibid.  281. 


ALEXANDER  GARDEN.  2g9 

inournful.  Continuing  his  career  as  public  surveyor  of 
North  Carolina  as  late  as  1712,  he  went  out  in  that  year 
upon  an  expedition  into  the  wilderness,  in  the  company  of 
a  Swiss  nobleman,  Baron  de  Graffenried,  who  had  plans 
for  bringing  a  colony  thither.  They  fell  into  the  hands 
of  hostile  Indians,  who  burned  Lawson  at  the  stake,1  and 
permitted  the  escape  of  the  baron  only  upon  his  payment 
of  a  ransom.  But  John  Lawson,  though  slain  thus  miser- 
ably, had  made  good  use  of  his  time  in  the  Carolinas  ;  and 
three  years  before  his  death,  he  had  published  in  London 
a  quarto  volume  embodying  the  story  of  his  adventures 
and  observations  in  the  new  world,  under  the  rather  inapt 
title  of  "The  History  of  North  Carolina,"*— an  uncom- 
monly strong  and  sprightly  book. 


4.   SOUTH   CAROLINA. 
I. 

There  were  in  South  Carolina  in  the  eighteenth  century 
three  distinguished  men  of  the  name  of  Alexander  Garden  ; 
one  a  physician  and  naturalist  ;  another,  his  son,  an  officer 
in  the  Revolutionary  War,  and  the  author  of  a  book  of 
anecdotes  respecting  that  contest;  the  third,  perhaps  not 
related  to  the  other  two,  an  Episcopal  clergyman,  who  died 
in  Charleston  in  1756,  after  a  service  of  thirty-four  years  as 
the  rector  of  St.  Philip's  in  that  city.  This  man,  a  native 
of  Scotland,  came  to  South  Carolina  about  the  year  1720, 
being  then  not  far  from  thirty-five  years  old ;  and  besides 

1  Col.  Byrd,  "  Dividing  Line."  174.  gives  a  somewhat  different  version  of 
the  circumstances  of  Lawson's  death.  He  says  that  the  Indians  were  angry 
at  Lawson  for  surveying  their  lands,  and  that  "  they  waylaid  him  and  cut  his 
throat  from  ear  to  ear." 

'Reprinted.  Raleigh.  N.  C,  1860.  A  physician  named  John  Brickell, 
apparently  an  Irishman,  and  settled  in  the  practice  of  his  profession  in  N.  C., 
published  at  Dublin,  in  1737,  "The  Natural  History  of  North  Carolina ;" 
but  this  book  is  an  extensive  and  very  impudent  plagiarism  from  John 
Lawson. 

VOL.  n.— 10 


290  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

his  rectorship  in  Charleston,  he  held  for  the  larger  part  of 
his  life  the  office  of  commissary  to  the  Bishop  of  London, 
for  the  Carolinas,  Georgia,  and  the  Bahama  islands.  He 
was  a  person  of  extraordinary  influence  in  his  day.  All 
his  opinions  were  sharply  defined ;  and  in  the  expression 
of  them  he  was  absolutely  without  fear.  He  stood  for  the 
authority  of  his  church  in  all  things ;  he  was  an  austere 
disciplinarian,  orderly,  energetic,  neither  taking  nor  grant- 
ing any  relaxation  from  the  letter  of  ecclesiastical  law. 
For  example,  he  would  never  perform  the  ceremony  of 
marriage  in  Lent,  or  on  any  fast  day,  or  in  any  manner 
deviating  in  the  smallest  particular  from  that  prescribed 
in  the  Prayer-book ;  for  marriage-fees,  he  would  receive 
not  one  penny  less  or  more  than  the  law  allowed ;  and 
exactly  one-tenth  of  his  income  was  measured  out  with 
arithmetical  precision  as  charity  to  the  poor.1 

In  the  year  1740,  alarmed  and  disgusted  by  the  proceed- 
ings of  the  great  preacher,  George  Whitefield,  who  was  a 
clergyman  of  the  Church  of  England,  Garden  not  only 
prosecuted  him  vigorously  in  the  ecclesiastical  court,  but 
pursued  him  with  energy  and  wit  in  the  wider  court  of 
public  opinion.  He  preached,  and  then  published,  two- 
sermons  entitled  "  Regeneration  and  the  Testimony  of  the 
Spirit,"  based  upon  the  text,  "  They  who  have  turned  the 
world  upside  down  have  come  hither  also ;  "  and  referring 
caustically  to  Whitefield  as  a  preacher  whose  sermons  are 
"  a  medley  of  truth  and  falsehood,  sense  and  nonsense, 
served  up  with  pride  and  virulence,  and  other  like  saucy 
ingredients." 2  He  likewise  published  a  series  of  six  letters 
to  Whitefield,  which  are  sprightly  and  pungent,  and  which 
the  New  England  divine,  Thomas  Prince,  described  as 
"  full  of  mistake,  misconstruction,  misrepresentation,  cavil, 
ill  nature,  ill  manners,  scorn,  and  virulence." 8  Three 
years  afterward,  in  the  year  1743,  Garden  himself  reviewed 

1  David  Ramsay,  "  Hist.  S.  C."  II.  466-469. 

*  Pref.  to  sermons.  *  Catalogue  of  Prince  Library,  26. 


ALEXANDER  GARDEN.  2g, 

the  tremendous  controversy,  and  justified  his  own  course 
in  it,  doing  this  in  a  letter1  to  a  friend,  some  sentences  of 
which  may  sufficiently  represent  to  us  the  rather  tart  and 
spicular  quality  of  his  style.  All  his  efforts,  he  says,  have 
been  directed  solely  in  defence  of  "the  cause  of  truth 
against  the  frantics  gone  forth  amongst  us.  ...  I  could 
now  indeed  wish  that  my  pen  against  Whitefield  had  run 
in  somewhat  smoother  a  style.  But  had  you  been  here  on 
the  spot  to  have  seen  the  frenzy  he  excited  among  the 
people,  the  bitterness  and  virulence  wherewith  he  raved 
against  the  clergy  of  the  Church  of  England  in  general. 
and  how  artfully  he  labored  to  set  the  mob  upon  me  in 
particular,  I  dare  say  you  would  have  thought  the  provoca- 
tion enough  to  ruffle  any  temper,  and  a  sufficient  apology 
for  the  keenest  expressions  I  have  used  against  him.  .  .  . 
As  to  the  state  of  religion  in  this  province,  it  is  bad 
enough,  God  knows.  Rome  and  the  Devil  have  contrived 
to  crucify  her  'twixt  two  thieves, — Infidelity  and  Enthusi- 
asm. The  former,  alas,  too  much  still  prevails  ;  but  as  to 
the  latter,  thanks  to  God,  it  is  greatly  subsided,  and  even 
at  the  point  of  vanishing  away.  We  had  here  trances, 
visions,  and  revelations  both  'mong  blacks  and  whites,  in 
abundance.  But  ever  since  the  famous  Hugh  Brian,  sous- 
ing himself  into  the  River  Jordan,  in  order  to  smite  and 
divide  its  waters,  had  his  eyes  opened,  and  saw  himself 
under  the  delusion  of  the  Devil,  those  things  have  dwin- 
dled into  disgrace,  and  are  now  no  more.  Bad  also  is  the 
present  state  of  the  poor  orphan-house  in  Georgia, — that 
land  of  lies,  and  from  which  we  have  no  truth  but  what 
they  can  neither  disguise  nor  conceal.  The  whole  colony 
is  accounted  here  one  great  lie,  from  the  beginning  to  this 
day ;  and  the  orphan-house,  you  know,  is  a  part  of  the 
whole — a  scandalous  bubble." 

1  First  printed  in  N.  E.  Hist,  and  Geneal.  Reg.  XXIV.  117-118. 


292  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

5.   GEORGIA. 

I. 

The  story  usually  given  concerning  the  original  settle- 
ment, in  1733,  of  the  youngest  of  the  American  colonies, 
reads  like  a  chapter  from  some  political  romance,  in  which 
the  hero,  General  James  Oglethorpe,  appears  to  be  a  com- 
pound of  Solon,  Achilles,  Don  Quixote,  and  the  Man  of 
Ross.  The  commonwealth  of  Georgia  makes  a  prompt 
and  rather  brilliant  entrance  into  American  literature,  by 
virtue  of  a  little  book  written  just  seven  years  after  the 
colony  was  founded,  —  the  joint  production  of  Patrick 
Tailfer,  Hugh  Anderson,  David  Douglass,  and  other  primi- 
tive inhabitants  of  the  colony.  These  men,  apparently  of 
considerable  literary  culture,  had  quarrelled  with  Ogle- 
thorpe, and  had  been  worsted ;  and  having  escaped  to 
Charleston  in  1740,  they  continued  the  fight  by  publishing 
in  that  year,  both  there  and  in  London,  an  artful  and 
powerful  book  against  Oglethorpe,  called  "A  True  and 
Historical  Narrative  of  the  Colony  of  Georgia." 

Within  a  volume  of  only  one  hundred  and  twelve  pages, 
is  compressed  a  masterly  statement  of  the  authors'  alleged 
grievances  at  the  hands  of  Oglethorpe.  The  book  gives  a 
detailed  and  even  documentary  account  of  the  rise  of  the 
colony,  and  of  its  quick  immersion  in  suffering  and  dis- 
aster, through  Oglethorpe's  selfishness,  greed,  despotism, 
and  fanatic  pursuit  of  social  chimeras.  It  charges  his 
deputy,  Thomas  Causton,  with  a  long  course  of  brutal 
tyranny  and  cruelty,  in  which  he  was  sustained  by  his  mas- 
ter. Its  summary  of  "  the  causes  of  the  ruin  and  desola- 
tion of  the  colony,"  contains  these  seven  particulars, — 
delusive  reports  in  England  of  the  natural  advantages  of 
Georgia,  restrictions  upon  the  tenure  and  use  of  its  lands, 
enormous  quit-rents,  paralysis  of  agriculture  through  Ogle- 
thorpe's refusal  to  admit  negro-labor,  the  cruel  abuse  of 
authority  by  Oglethorpe  and  his  subordinates,  their  neglect 


PATRICK  TAILFER.  293 

of  manufactures,  finally,  Oglethorpe's  perversion  of  moneys 
entrusted  to  him  in  Christian  charity  for  the  erection  of 
churches  and  schools. 

Whatever  may  be  the  truth  or  the  justice  of  this  book, 
it  is  abundantly  interesting  ;  and  if  any  one  has  chanced 
to  find  the  prevailing  rumor  of  Oglethorpe  somewhat 
nauseating  in  its  sweetness,  he  may  here  easily  allay  that 
unpleasant  effect.  Certainly,  as  a  polemic,  it  is  one  of  the 
most  expert  pieces  of  writing  to  be  met  with  in  our  early 
literature.  Its  mastery  of  the  situation  is  everywhere 
maintained,  through  the  perfect  mastery  on  the  part  of 
the  authors,  of  their  own  temper.  It  never  blusters  or 
scolds.  It  is  always  cool,  poised,  polite,  and  merciless; 
and  it  passes  back  and  forth,  with  fatal  ease,  between 
dreadful  fact  and  equally  dreadful  invective  and  raillery. 
For  example,  it  accuses  Oglethorpe  of  caring  more  for  the 
prosperity  of  his  political  hobbies,  than  for  the  happiness 
of  his  colonists :  "  Alas,  our  miseries  could  not  alter  his 
views  of  things."  l  It  contrasts  the  brave  and  beautiful 
fictions  about  Georgia  that  were  sown  broadcast  over  Eng- 
land, with  the  sorrowful  and  terrible  realities :  "  Thus, 
while  the  nation  at  home  was  amused  with  the  fame  of 
the  happiness  and  flourishing  of  the  colony,  .  .  .  the  poor 
miserable  settlers  and  inhabitants  were  exposed  to  as 
arbitrary  a  government  as  Turkey  or  Muscovy  ever  felt. 
Very  looks  were  criminal ;  and  the  grand  sin  of  withstand- 
ing .  .  .  authority  .  .  .  was  punished  without  mercy."2 
After  spreading  before  the  world  the  whole  horrible  story, 
the  book  concludes  with  this  powerful  and  pathetic  sen- 
tence :  "  By  these  and  many  other  such  hardships,  the  poor 
inhabitants  of  Georgia  are  scattered  over  the  face  of  the 
earth,— her  plantations  a  wild,  her  towns  a  desert,  her  vil- 
lages in  rubbish,  her  improvements  a  byword,  and  her 
liberties  a  jest,  an  object  of  pity  to  friends,  and  of  insult, 
contempt,  and  ridicule  to  enemies." 

1  "  Narrative,"  etc.  Pref.  riiL  * Ibid-  36. 


294  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

The  above  description  of  the  contents  of  the  book  may 
prepare  the  reader  to  appreciate  the  most  artistic  and 
amusing  part  of  it, — the  dedication.  With  exquisite  mock- 
ery, the  book  is  inscribed  to  Oglethorpe  himself.  It  places 
his  name  in  full  at  the  head  of  the  address,  prefixing  and 
affixing  all  his  sonorous  titles,  military,  political,  literary, 
and  feudalistic ;  it  addresses  him  always,  with  feigned  rev- 
erence, as  "your  Excellency;"  and  it  forms  altogether  a 
most  laughable  burlesque  upon  laudatory  dedications  in 
general,  and  an  elegant  and  most  caustic  satire  upon  what 
the  authors  call  the  vanity  and  hypocrisy  of  Oglethorpe 
in  particular.  Referring  to  the  confusion,  the  poverty  and 
wretchedness  into  which  the  colony  had  fallen,  and  veiling 
this  deadly  meaning  under  the  forms  of  utmost  urbanity 
and  compliment,  it  thus  salutes  him  :  "  May  it  please  your 
Excellency,  As  the  few  surviving  remains  of  the  colony  of 
Georgia  find  it  necessary  to  present  the  world,  and  in  par- 
ticular Great  Britain,  with  a  true  state  of  that  province,  from 
its  first  rise  to  its  present  period,  your  Excellency,  of  all 
mankind,  is  best  entitled  to  the  dedication,  as  the  principal 
author  of  its  present  strength  and  affluence,  freedom  and 
prosperity.  And  though  incontestable  truths  will  recom- 
mend the  following  narrative  to  the  patient  and  attentive 
reader,  yet  your  name,  Sir,  will  be  no  little  ornament  to 
the  frontispiece,  and  may  possibly  engage  some  courteous 
reader  a  little  beyond  it." 

It  then  delicately  taunts  Oglethorpe  with  the  elaborate 
and  nauseous  flattery  in  prose  and  verse  to  which  he  was 
accustomed,  and  which  he  seemed  to  encourage :  "  That 
dedication  and  flattery  are  synonymous,  is  the  complaint 
of  every  dedicator,  who  concludes  himself  ingenious  and 
fortunate,  if  he  can  discover  a  less  trite  and  direct  method 
of  flattering  than  is  usually  practised;  but  we  are  hap- 
pily prevented  from  the  least  intention  of  this  kind,  by 
the  repeated  offerings  of  the  muses  and  news-writers  to 
your  Excellency,  in  the  public  papers.  'Twere  presump- 
tuous even  to  dream  of  equalling  or  increasing  them.  We 


PATRICK  TAILFER.  2^ 

therefore  flatter  ourselves  that  nothing  we  can  advance 
will  in  tl:?  least  shock  your  Excellency's  modesty,  not 
doubting  but  >  ->ur  goodness  will  pardon  any  deficiency  of 
elegance  and  politeness,  on  account  of  our  sincerity,  and 
the  serious  truths  we  have  the  honor  to  approach  you 
with." 

With  the  most  deferenti.il  tones  they  then  proceed  to 
compliment  him  on  the  principal  traits  of  novelty  in  his 
arrangements  for  Georgia,  every  :tem  mentioned  as  an 
encomium  being,  in  fact,  a  thrust  of  deadly  sarcasm  :  "  We 
have  seen  the  ancient  custom  of  sending  forth  colonies, 
for  the  improvement  of  any  distant  territory  or  new  ac- 
quisition, continued  down  to  ourselves;  but  to  your  Ex- 
cellency alone  it  is  owing  that  the  world  is  made  ac- 
quainted with  a  plan  highly  refined  from  those  of  all  former 
projectors.  They  fondly  imagined  it  necessary  to  com- 
municate to  such  young  settlements  the  fullest  rights  and 
properties,  all  the  immunities  of  their  mother-countries, 
and  privileges  rather  more  extensive.  By  such  means,  in- 
deed, these  colonies  flourished  with  early  trade  and  afflu- 
ence. But  your  Excellency's  concern  for  our  perpetual 
welfare  could  never  permit  you  to  propose  such  transitory 
advantages  for  us.  You  considered  riches,  like  a  divine 
and  a  philosopher,  as  the  '  irritamenta  malorum,'  and  knew 
that  they  were  disposed  to  inflate  weak  minds  with  pride, 
to  hamper  the  body  with  luxury,  and  introduce  a  long 
variety  of  evils.  Thus  have  you  '  protected  us  from  our- 
selves,' as  Mr.  Waller  says,  by  keeping  all  earthly  comforts 
from  us.  You  have  afforded  us  the  opportunity  of  arriving 
at  the  integrity  of  the  primitive  times,  by  entailing  a  more 
than  primitive  poverty  on  us.  The  toil  that  is  necessary 
to  our  bare  subsistence,  must  effectually  defend  us  from  the 
anxieties  of  any  further  ambition.  As  we  have  no  proper- 
ties to  feed  vainglory  and  beget  contention,  so  we  are  not 
puzzled  with  any  system  of  laws  to  ascertain  and  establish 
.  them.  The  valuable  virtue  of  humility  is  secured  to  us  by 
your  care  to  prevent  our  procuring,  or  so  much  as  seeing, 


296  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITER  A  TURE. 

any  negroes,  .  .  .  lest  our  simplicity  might  mistake  the 
poor  Africans  for  greater  slaves  than  ourselves.  And  that 
we  rnight  fully  receive  the  spiritual  benefit  of  those  whole- 
some austerities,  you  have  wisely  denied  us  the  use  of 
such  spirituous  liquors  as  might  in  the  least  divert  our 
minds  from  the  contemplation  of  our  happy  circumstances. 
"  Be  pleased,  .  .  .  Great  Sir,  to  accompany  our  heated 
imaginations  in  taking  a  view  of  this  colony  of  Georgia, — 
this  child  of  your  auspicious  politics, — arrived  at  the  ut- 
most vigor  of  its  constitution  at  a  term  when  most  former 
states  have  been  struggling  through  the  convulsions  of 
their  infancy.  This  early  maturity,  however,  lessens  our 
admiration  that  your  Excellency  lives  to  see  (what  few 
Founders  ever  aspired  after)  the  great  decline  and  al- 
most final  termination  of  it.  So  many  have  finished  their 
course  during  the  progress  of  the  experiment,  and  such 
numbers  have  retreated  from  the  phantoms  of  poverty 
and  slavery  which  their  cowardly  imaginations  pictured  to 
them,  that  you  may  justly  vaunt  with  the  boldest  hero  of 

them  all, 

'  Like  Death  you  reign 

O'er  silent  subjects  and  a  desert  plain.' 

"  Yet  must  your  enemies  (if  you  have  any)  be  ready  to 
confess  that  no  ordinary  statesman  could  have  digested,  in 
the  like  manner,  so  capacious  a  scheme,  such  a  copious 
jumble  of  power  and  politics.  We  shall  content  ourselves 
with  observing  that  all  those  beauteous  models  of  govern- 
ment which  the  little  states  of  Germany  exercise,  and 
those  extensive  liberties  which  the  boors  of  Poland  enjoy, 
were  designed  to  concentre  in  your  system ;  and  were 
we  to  regard  the  modes  of  government,  we  must  have  been 
strangely  unlucky  to  have  missed  of  the  best,  where  there 
was  an  appearance  of  so  great  a  variety.  For,  under  the 
influence  of  our  Perpetual  Dictator,  we  have  seen  some- 
thing like  aristocracy,  oligarchy,  as  well  as  the  triumvirate, 
decemvirate,  and  consular  authority  of  famous  republics, 
which  have  expired  many  ages  before  us.  What  wonder 


PATRICK  TAILFER.  397 

then,  we  share  the  same  fate  ?  Do  their  towns  and  vil- 
lages exist  but  in  story  and  rubbish  ?  We  are  all  over 
ruins;  our  public-works,  forts,  wells,  highways,  light-houses, 
stores,  and  water-mills,  and  so  forth,  are  dignified  like 
theirs  with  the  same  venerable  desolation.  The  log-house, 
indeed,  is  like  td  be  the  last  forsaken  spot  of  your  empire ; 
yet  even  this,  through  the  death  or  desertion  of  those 
who  should  continue  to  inhabit  it,  must  suddenly  decay ; 
the  bankrupt  jailor  himself  shall  soon  be  denied  the  privi- 
lege of  human  conversation  ;  and  when  this  last  moment  of 
the  spell  expires,  the  whole  shall  vanish  like  the  illusion  of 
some  eastern  magician. 

"  But  let  not  this  solitary  prospect  impress  your  Ex- 
cellency with  any  fears  of  having  your  services  to  man- 
kind, and  to  the  settlers  of  Georgia  in  particular,  buried 
in  oblivion  ;  for  if  we  diminutive  authors  are  allowed  to 
prophesy, — as  you  know  poets  in  those  cases  formerly  did, 
— we  may  confidently  presage,  that  while  the  memoirs  of 
America  continue  to  be  read  in  English,  Spanish,  or  the 
language  of  the  Scots  Highlanders,  your  Excellency's  ex- 
ploits and  epocha  will  be  transmitted  to  posterity. 

"  Should  your  Excellency  apprehend  the  least  tincture 
of  flattery  in  anything  already  hinted,  we  may  sincerely  as- 
sure you,  we  intended  nothing  that  our  sentiments  did  not 
very  strictly  attribute  to  your  merit ;  and  in  such  senti- 
ments we  have  the  satisfaction  of  being  fortified  by  all 
persons  of  impartiality  and  discernment. 

"  But  not  to  trespass  on  those  minutes  which  your  Ex- 
cellency may  suppose  more  significantly  employed  on  the 
sequel,  let  it  suffice  at  present  to  assure  you  that  we  are 
deeply  affected  by  your  favors;  and  though  unable  of  our- 
selves properly  to  acknowledge  them,  we  shall  embrace 
every  opportunity  of  recommending  you  to  higher  powers, 
who,  we  are  hopeful,  will  reward  your  Excellency  accord- 
ing to  your  Merit ! " 


CHAPTER   XVIII. 

GENERAL  LITERARY  FORCES  IN  THE  COLONIAL  TIME. 

I. — Tendency  in  each  colony  toward  isolation — Local  peculiarities  in  thought 
and  language — Distribution  of  personal  and  literary  types. 

II. — General  tendencies  toward  colonial  fellowship,  founded  on  kinship,  re- 
ligion, commerce,  subjection  to  the  same  sovereign,  peril  from  the  same 
enemies — Special  intellectual  tendencies  toward  colonial  fellowship, 
founded  on  the  rise  of  journalism,  the  establishment  of  colleges,  and  the 
study  of  physical  science. 

III. — The  rise  of  American  journalism — "  Public  Occurrences,"  in  1690 — 
"  The  Boston  News-Letter,"  in  1704— Dates  of  the  founding  of  the  first 
newspapers  in  the  several  colonies — Whole  number  founded  in  each  col- 
ony before  1 765— Description  of  the  colonial  newspapers — Their  effect  on 
intercolonial  acquaintance — The  growth  of  literary  skill  in  them — Early 
literary  magazines  —  First  one  founded  by  Franklin,  in  1741 — "The 
American  Magazine,"  at  Boston — "  The  Independent  Reflector,"  at  New 
York — "  The  American  Magazine,"  at  Philadelphia. 

IV. — Early  American  colleges — Seven  founded  before  1765 — Harvard,  William 
and  Mary,  Yale,  New  Jersey,  King's,  Philadelphia,  Rhode  Lsland — Grade 
and  extent  of  instruction  in  them — Predominant  study  of  the  ancient 
classics — Requirements  for  admission  at  Harvard  and  Yale — Latin  in 
ordinary  use  in  the  colleges — Range  of  studies — Expertness  in  the  use  of 
the  ancient  languages — How  the  early  colleges  led  to  colonial  union — 
Their  vast  influence  on  literary  culture — Their  promotion  of  the  spiritual 
conditions  on  which  the  growth  of  literature  depends — One  effect  of  their 
work  seen  in  the  state- papers  of  the  Revolutionary  period — Lord  Chat- 
ham's tribute. 

V. — Study  of  physical  science  in  America — Begun  by  the  earliest  Americans 
— Eminence  of  John  Winthrop  of  Connecticut — His  connections  with  the 
Royal  Society — Fitz  John  Winthrop — Stimulus  given  to  study  of  nature 
in  New  England — Increase  Mather — John  Williams — Cotton  Mather — 
Jared  Eliot — Joseph  Dudley — Paul  Dudley — Study  of  science  in  Virginia 
— John  Banister — William  Byrd — Mark  Catesby — John  Clayton — John 
Mitchell — John  Bart  ram  of  Pennsylvania — John  Winthrop  of  Harvard 
College — The  intercolonial  correspondence  of  scientific  men — Culmina- 
tion of  scientific  research  between  1740  and  1765 — The  brilliant  services 
of  Franklin — America  instructing  Europe  in  electricity — Leading  scien- 
tific men  in  the  several  colonies — Scientific  fellowship  a  preparation  for 
political  fellowship — Impulse  given  by  science  to  literature. 
VI — Great  change  in  the  character  of  American  literature  after  1765. 

298 


ENGLISH  LANGUAGE  IN  AMERICA. 


THE  study  of  American  literature  in  the  colonial  time, 
is  the  study  of  a  literature  produced,  in  isolated  portions, 
at  the  several  local  scats  of  English  civilization  in  America. 
Before  the  year  1765,  we  find  in  this  country,  not  one 
American  people,  but  many  American  peoples.  At  the 
various  centres  of  our  colonial  life, — Georgia,  the  Carolinas, 
Virginia,  Maryland,  Pennsylvania,  New  York,  Connecticut, 
Rhode  Island,  Massachusetts, — there  were,  indeed,  popu- 
lations of  the  same  English  stock ;  but  these  populations 
differed  widely  in  personal  and  social  peculiarities — in 
spirit,  in  opinion,  in  custom.  The  germs  of  a  future  na- 
tion were  here,  only  they  were  far  apart,  unsympathetic, 
at  times  even  unfriendly.  No  cohesive  principle  prevailed, 
no  centralizing  life ;  each  little  nation  was  working  out  its 
own  destiny  in  its  own  fashion.  The  Swedish  scholar, 
Peter  Kalm,  travelling  through  the  colonies  from  1748  to 
1751,  was  astonished  at  the  isolation  of  each  in  laws,  in 
moneys,  in  military  plans,  in  social  usages.1  In  1765,  on 
the  assembling  at  New  York  of  the  first  continental  con- 
gress, the  delegates  from  the  several  colonies,  like  ambas- 
sadors from  remote  nations,  could  at  first  only  stare  at  one 
another  as  utter  strangers  in  face,  in  character,  even  in 
name. 

This  notable  fact  of  the  isolation  of  each  colony  or  of 
each  small  group  of  colonies,  reflects  itself  both  in  the 
form  and  in  the  spirit  of  our  early  literature, — giving  to 
each  colony  or  to  each  group  its  own  literary  accent. 

The  English  language  that  prevailed  in  all  the  colonies 
was,  of  course,  the  English  language  that  had  been  brought 
from  England  in  the  seventeenth  century ;  but,  according 
to  a  well-established  linguistic  law,  it  had  at  once  suffered 
here  an  arrest  of  development,  remaining  for  some  time  in 

«  "  Travels,"  I.  262-263. 


300  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

the  stage  in  which  it  was  at  the  period  of  the  emigration  ; 
and  when  it  began  to  alter,  it  altered  more  slowly  than  it 
had  done,  in  the  meantime,  in  the  mother-country,  and  it 
altered  irt  a  different  direction.  Indeed>  even  in  the  nine- 
teenth century,  "  the  speech  of  the  American  English  is 
archaic  with  respect  to  that  of  the  British  English," ' — • 
its  peculiarities  consisting,  in  the  main,  of  "  seventeenth 
century  survivals  as  modified  by  environment." 2 

Moreover,  just  as  environment  led  to  many  modifica- 
tions of  the  English  language  as  between  the  several  col- 
onies and  the  mother-country,  so  did  it  lead  to  many 
modifications  of  the  English  language  as  between  the  sev- 
eral colonies  themselves ;  and  by  the  year  1752,  it  was  pos- 
sible for  Benjamin  Franklin  to  say  that  every  colony  had 
"  some  peculiar  expressions,  familiar  to  its  own  people,  but 
strange  and  unintelligible  to  others."3 

But  the  separate  literary  accent  of  each  colony  was  de- 
rived, also,  from  dissimilarities  deeper  than  those  relating 
to  verbal  forms  and  verbal  combinations,  namely,  dissimi- 
larities in  personal  character.  Thus,  the  literature  of  the 
Churchmen  and  Cavaliers  of  Virginia  differed  from  the 
literature  of  the  Calvinists  and  Roundheads  of  New  Eng- 
land, just  as  their  natures  differed  :  the  former  being  mer- 
ry, sparkling,  with  a  sensual  and  a  worldly  vein,  having 
some  echoes  from  the  lyric  poets  and  the  dramatists  of  the 
seventeenth  century,  and  from  the  wits  of  the  time  of 
Queen  Anne  ;  the  latter,  sad,  devout,  theological,  analytic, 
with  a  constant  effort  toward  the  austerities  of  the  spirit, 
looking  joylessly  upon  this  material  world  as  upon  a  sphere 
blighted  by  sin,  giving  back  plaintive  reverberations  from 
the  diction  of  the  Bible,  of  the  sermon-writers,  and  of  the 
makers  of  grim  and  sorrowful  verse.  Between  these  two 
extremes, — Virginia  and  New  England, — there  lay  the  mid- 

1  A.  J.  Ellis,  "  Early  Eng.  Pron."  Part  I.  19-20,  whose  language  in  stating 
the  general  law,  I  closely  follow  above  in  my  statement  of  a  special  illustra- 
tion of  it. 

»  Ibid.  Part  IV.  xvii.  »  Works,  VII.  56. 


COLONIAL  FELLOWSHIP.  3OI 

die  region*  of  spiritual  and  literary  compromise,  New 
York  and  Pennsylvania;  and  there  the  gravity  and  im- 
mobility of  the  Dutch  Presbyterians,  the  primness,  the 
literalness,  the  art-scorning  mysticism  of  the  Pennsylva- 
nia Quakers,  were  soon  tempered  and  diversified  by  an 
infusion  of  personal  influences  that  were  strongly  stimulat- 
ing and  expanding, — many  of  them  being,  indeed,  free- 
iTiinded,  light-hearted,  and  moved  by  a  conscious  attrac- 
tion toward  the  catholic  and  the  beautiful.  In  general,  the 
characteristic  note  of  American  literature  in  the  colonial 
time,  is,  for  New  England,  scholarly,  logical,  speculative, 
unworldly,  rugged,  sombre ;  and  as  one  passes  southward 
along  the  coast,  across  other  spiritual  zones,  this  literary 
note  changes  rapidly  toward  lightness  and  brightness, 
until  it  reaches  the  sensuous  mirth,  the  frank  and  jovial 
worldliness,  the  satire,  the  persiflage,  the  gentlemanly 
grace,  the  amenity,  the  jocular  coarseness,  of  literature  in 
Maryland,  Virginia,  and  the  farther  south. 

II. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  fact  must  not  be  overlooked 
that,  while  the  tendency  toward  colonial  isolation  had  its 
way,  throughout  the  entire  colonial  age,  there  was  also  an 
opposite  tendency — a  tendency  toward  colonial  fellowship 
— that  asserted  itself  even  from  the  first,  and  yet  at  the 
first  faintly,  but  afterward  with  steadily  increasing  power 
as  time  went  on  ;  until  at  last,  in  1765,  aided  by  a  fortunate 
blunder  in  the  statesmanship  of  England,  this  tendency  be- 
came suddenly  dominant,  and  led  to  that  united  and  great 
national  life,  without  which  a  united  and  great  national 
literature  here  would  have  been  forever  impossible.  This 
august  fact  of  fellowship  between  the  several  English  pop- 
ulations in  America, — a  fellowship  maintained  and  even 
strengthened  after  the  original  occasion  of  it  had  ceased, — 
has  perhaps  saved  the  English  language  in  America  from 
finally  breaking  up  into  a  multitude  of  mutually  repellent 


302 


HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 


dialects ;  it  has  certainly  saved  American  literature  from 
the  pettiness  of  permanent  local  distinctions,  from  fitful- 
ness  in  its  development,  and  from  disheartening  limitations 
in  its  audience. 

Of  the  causes  that  were  at  work  during  our  colonial  age 
to  produce  and  strengthen  this  benign  tendency  toward 
colonial  fellowship,  and  to  ripen  it  for  the  illustrious  op- 
portunity that  came  in  the  year  1765,  several  belong  espe- 
cially to  the  domain  of  general  history  ;  and  it  will  be 
enough  for  our  present  purposes  merely  to  name  them 
here.  First,  it  is  evident  that,  between  the  English  resi- 
dents in  America,  blood  told  ;  for,  whatever  partisan  dis- 
tinctions, religious  or  political,  separated  the  primitive 
colonists  on  their  departure  from  England  and  during 
their  earlier  years  here,  these  distinctions,  after  a  while, 
grew  dim,  especially  under  the  consciousness  that  they  who 
cherished  them  were,  after  all,  members  of  the  same  great 
English  family,  and  that  the  contrasts  between  themselves 
were  far  less  than  the  contrasts  between  themselves  and  all 
other  persons  on  this  side  of  the  Atlantic, — Frenchmen, 
Spaniards,  and  Indians.  Secondly,  there  were  certain  re- 
ligious sympathies  that  led  to  intercolonial  acquaintance, 
— Churchmen  in  one  colony  reaching  out  the  hand  of  bro- 
therhood to  Churchmen  in  another  colony,  Quakers  in 
Pennsylvania  greeting  Quakers  in  New  Jersey  or  Rhode 
Island,  the  Congregational  Calvinists  of  New  England 
reciprocating  kind  words  with  the  Presbyterian  Calvinists 
of  the  middle  colonies  and  the  south.  Thirdly,  in  the  inter- 
change of  commodities  between  the  several  colonies,  com- 
merce played  its  usual  part  as  a  missionary  of  genial  ac- 
quaintance and  cooperation.  Fourthly,  there  were  in  all 
the  colonies  certain  problems  common  to  all,  growing  out 
of  their  relation  to  the  supreme  authority  of  England ;  and 
the  method  of  dealing  with  these  problems  in  any  one  col- 
ony was  of  interest  to  all  the  others.  Finally,  all  were  aware 
of  a  common  peril  from  the  American  ambition  of  France, 
and  from  the  savage  allies  of  France  on  this  continent. 


EARL  Y  AMERICAN  JO  URN  A  LI SM.  ^ 

Besides  these  general  causes  leading  toward  colonial 
union,— kinship,  religion,  commerce,  dependence  upon  the 
same  sovereign,  peril  from  the  same  enemies,— there  were 
three  other  causes  that  may  be  described  as  purely  intel- 
lectual— the  rise  of  journalism,  the  founding  of  colleges, 
and  the  study  of  physical  science.  To  these  we  now  need 
to  pay  some  attention,  for  the  double  reason  that  they 
worked  strongly  for  the  development  of  that  intercolonial 
fellowship,  without  which  no  national  literature  would  ever 
have  been  born  here,  and,  also,  that  they  were  in  them- 
selves  literary  forces  of  extraordinary  importance. 


III. 

The  first  newspaper  ever  published  in  America  appeared 
in  Boston  in  1690,  and  was  named  "  Public  Occurrences." 
For  the  crime  of  uttering  "  reflections  of  a  very  high  na- 
ture," it  was  immediately  extinguished  by  the  authorities 
of  Massachusetts, — not  even  attaining  the  dignity  of  a 
second  number.1  Under  this  rough  blow,  the  real  birth 
of  American  journalism  hesitated  for  fourteen  years.  On 
the  fourth  of  April,  1704,  was  published  in  Boston  the  first 
number  of  an  American  newspaper  that  lived.  It  was 
called  "  The  Boston  News-Letter."  For  fifteen  years,  it 
continued  to  be  the  only  newspaper  in  America.  At  last, 
on  the  twenty-first  of  December,  1719,  a  rival  newspaper 
was  started,  named  "  The  Boston  Gazette ; "  and  on  the 
twenty-second  day  of  the  same  month,  in  the  same  year, 
there  appeared  in  Philadelphia  the  first  newspaper  pub- 
lished in  this  country  outside  of  Boston.  This  was  called 
"  The  American  Weekly  Mercury."  From  that  time  on- 
ward, the  fashion  of  having  newspapers  spread  rapidly. 
In  1721,  James  Franklin  began  in  Boston  "The  New  Eng- 
land Courant,"  in  which  his  renowned  apprentice  got  his 
first  training  as  a  writer  for  the  press.  In  1725,  William 

«  F.  Hudson,  "Journalism  in  the  U.  S."  44-49- 


304  HISTOR  Y  Of  AMERICAN  LITERA  TURE. 

Bradford  founded  in  New  York  the  first  newspaper  there. 
Maryland  followed  with  its  first  newspaper,  in  1727  ;  next 
came  South  Carolina  and  Rhode  Island,  both  in  1732; 
then  Virginia,  in  1736;  then  North  Carolina  and  Connecti- 
cut, both  in  1755;  then  New  Hampshire,  in  1756;  finally, 
Georgia,  in  1763.  Before  the  close  of  the  year  1765,  there 
had  been  established  in  the  American  colonies  at  least 
forty-three  newspapers, — one  in  Georgia,  four  in  South 
Carolina,  two  in  North  Carolina,  one  in  Virginia,  two  in 
Maryland,  five  in  Pennsylvania,  eight  in  New  York,  four 
in  Connecticut,  three  in  Rhode  Island,  two  in  New  Hamp- 
shire, and  eleven  in  Massachusetts.1 

Nearly  all  of  these  newspapers  were  issued  once  each 
week;  many  of  them  were  on  diminutive  sheets;  and  for 
a  long  time,  all  of  them  clung  to  the  prudent  plan  of  pub- 
lishing only  news  and  advertisements,  abstaining  entirely 
from  the  audacity  of  an  editorial  opinion,  or  disguising 
that  dangerous  luxury  under  pretended  letters  from  corre- 
spondents. News  from  Europe, — when  it  was  to  be  had, 
— and  especially  news  from  England,  occupied  a  prominent 
place  in  these  little  papers ;  but,  necessarily,  for  each  one, 
the  affairs  of  its  own  colony,  and  next,  the  affairs  of  the 
other  colonies  furnished  the  principal  items  of  interest. 
Thus  it  was  that  early  American  journalism,  even  though 
feeble,  sluggish,  and  timid,  began  to  lift  the  people  of  each 
colony  to  a  plane  somewhat  higher  than  its  own  bounda- 
ries, and  to  enable  them,  by  looking  abroad,  this  way  and 
that,  upon  the  proceedings  of  other  people  in  this  country, 
and  upon  other  interests  as  precious  as  their  own,  to  cor- 
rect the  pettiness  and  the  selfishness  of  mere  localism 
in  thought.  Colonial  journalism  was  a  necessary  and  a 
great  factor  in  the  slow  process  of  colonial  union. 

Besides  this,  our  colonial  journalism  soon  became,  in 
itself,  a  really  important  literary  force.  It  could  not  re- 

1  For  the  above  titles  and  dates,  I  depend  chiefly  on  I.  Thomas,  "  Hist 
Printing  in  Am."  II.  1-174. 


EARLY  AMERICAN  JOURNALISM.  y^ 

main  forever  a  mere  disseminator  of  public  gossip,  or  a 
placard  for  the  display  of  advertisements.  The  instinct  of 
critical  and  brave  debate  was  strong  even  among  those 
puny  editors,  and  it  kept  struggling  for  expression.  More- 
over, each  editor  was  surrounded  by  a  coterie  of  friends, 
with  active  brains  and  a  propensity  to  utterance ;  and 
these  constituted  a  sort  of  unpaid  staff  of  editorial  con- 
tributors,  who,  in  various  forms, — letters,  essays,  anecdotes, 
epigrams,  poems,  lampoons, — helped  to  give  vivacity  and 
even  literary  value  to  the  paper. 

Our  early  journalism,  likewise,  included  publications  of 
a  more  explicit  literary  intention  than  the  newspapers ; 
publications  in  which  the  original  work  was  done  with  far 
greater  care,  and  in  which  far  more  space  was  surrendered  to 
literary  news  and  literary  criticism,  and  to  the  exercise  of 
many  sorts  of  literary  talent.  The  generic  name  for  these 
publications  is  the  magazine  ;  and  the  first  one  issued  in 
this  country  was  by  Benjamin  Franklin,  at  Philadelphia,  in 
1741,  and  was  called  "  The  General  Magazine  and  Histori- 
cal Chronicle,  for  all  the  British  Plantations  in  America." 
It  contained,  besides  general  news,  copious  extracts  from 
new  books,  and  original  poems  and  prose  essays.  Two 
years  afterward,  was  started  in  Boston  "  The  American 
Magazine  and  Historical  Chronicle,"  closely  modelled  after 
"  The  London  Magazine,"  and  edited  by  an  eminent  law- 
yer of  literary  proclivities,  Jeremiah  Gridley.  It  was  pub- 
lished  once  a  month  ;  and  it  undertook  to  give  in  each 
number  reprints  of  the  best  essays  from  the  journals  of 
London  and  the  colonies,  the  proceedings  of  the  Royal 
Society,  a  list  of  new  books,  abundant  extracts  from  new 
books,  "select  pieces  relating  to  the  arts  and  sciences," 
"  essays,  moral,  civil,  political,  humorous,  and  polemical," 
and  "  poetical  essays  on  various  subjects." !  The  next  nota- 
ble publication  of  this  kind  was  "  The  Independent  Re- 
flector," begun  at  New  York  in  1752,  and  particularly  de- 

'  Part  of  prospectus,  in  I.  Thomas,  "  Hist.  Printing  irf  Am."  II.  68. 


306  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITER  A  TURE. 

voted  to  ethical,  political,  and  humorous  essays,  in  prose 
and  verse,  which  were  contributed  by  a  club  of  literary  men 
in  New  York  and  its  neighborhood,  including  William  Liv- 
ingston, President  Aaron  Burr,  John  Morin  Scott,  and  the 
historian,  William  Smith.1 

By  far  the  most  admirable  example  of  our  literary  peri- 
odicals in  the  colonial  time,  was  "  The  American  Magazine," 
published  at  Philadelphia  from  October,  1757,  to  October, 
1758,  and  conducted,  according  to  its  own  announcement, 
"  by  a  society  of  gentlemen."  In  the  first  number,  these 
gentlemen  gave  a  rather  lively  description  of  themselves 
"  as  persons  whose  talents  and  views  in  life  are  very  differ- 
ent. .  .  .  Some  are,  accordingly,  of  one  temper  and  dispo- 
sition, and  some  of  another.  Some  are  grave  and  serious, 
while  others  are  gay  and  facetious.  .  .  .  Some  indulge 
themselves  in  the  belles-lettres  and  in  productions  of  wit 
and  fancy,  while  others  are  wrapt  up  in  speculation  and 
wholly  bent  on  the  abstruser  parts  of  philosophy  and 
science." 2  The  magazine  contains  a  summary  of  the 
world's  news,  philosophical  and  political  discussions,  aes- 
thetic and  playful  essays,  poems  grave  and  gay, — all  in- 
dicating literary  feeling,  if  not  literary  power.  William 
Smith,  the  clergyman  and  president  of  the  young  college 
at  Philadelphia,  was  its  principal  contributor,  and  indeed 
the  leading  spirit  in  its  management 

IV. 

No  other  facts  in  American  history  are  more  creditable 
to  the  American  people,  than  those  which  relate  to  their 
early  and  steady  esteem  for  higher  education,  and  espe- 
cially to  their  efforts  and  their  sacrifices  in  the  founding  of 
colleges.  Before  the  year  1765,  seven  colleges  were  estab- 
lished here,  all  of  which,  excepting  the  one  of  latest  birth, 


1  I.  Thomas,  "  Hist.  Printing  in  Am."  II.  125. 
*  "The  Am.  Mag."  Oct.  1757,  Pref.  4-5. 


EARLY  AMERICAN   COLLEGES.  307 

have  been  mentioned  already  in  the  progress  of  this  his- 
tory: Harvard,  in  1636;  William  and  Mary,  in  1693;  Yale, 
in  1700;  New  Jersey,  in  1746;  King's,1  in  1754;  Phila- 
delphia,1 in  1755  ;  Rhode  Island,5  in  1764. 

Though  all  these  little  establishments  bore  the  name  of 
colleges,  there  were  considerable  differences  among  them 
with  respect  to  the  grade  and  extent  of  the  instruction 
they  furnished,— those  founded  latest  being,  in  that  par- 
ticular, the  most  rudimental.  Nevertheless,  at  them  all 
one  noble  purpose  prevailed, — the  study  of  the  ancient 
classics.  Thus,  at  Harvard,  so  early  as  1643,  the  require- 
ments for  entrance  were  stated  as  follows:  "When  any 
scholar  is  able  to  understand  Tully  or  such  like  classical 
Latin  author  extempore,  and  make  and  speak  true  Latin 
in  verse  and  prose ;  .  .  .  and  decline  perfectly  the  para- 
digms of  nouns  and  verbs  in  the  Greek  tongue,  let  him 
then,  and  not  before,  be  capable  of  admission  into  the 
college."4  In  1719,  when  Jonathan  Edwards  was  a  Junior 
at  Yale  College,  he  sent  to  his  father  this  account  of  the 
entrance  examination  at  that  college  of  a  lad  named  Stiles, 
in  whom  both  were  interested :  "  He  was  examined  in 
Tully's  Orations,  in  which,  though  he  had  never  construed 
before  he  came  to  New  Haven,  yet  he  committed  no 
error, — in  that  or  any  other  book,  whether  Latin,  Greek,  or 
Hebrew, — except  in  Virgil,  wherein  he  could  not  tell  the 
4 praeteritum '  of  'requiesco.'"5  Once  within  the  college, 
the  student  was  required  to  drop  the  English  language, 
and  to  use  Latin  as  the  usual  medium  of  intercourse: 
"Scholares  vernacula  lingua,  intra  collegii  limites,  nullo 
praetextu  utuntor."'  The  course  of  study  "embraced  the 
contemporaneous  learning  of  the  colleges  in  England;"7 
and  as  far  as  possible,  everything  was  done  here  "  pro  more 

1  Now  Columbia  College.  •  Now  the  University  of  Pennsylvania. 

•  Now  Brown  University. 

4  B.  Peirce,  "  Hist.  Harv.  Univ."  Appendix,  4-5. 

»  Works  of  J.  Edwards,  I.  31.         •  J.  Quincy,  "  Hist  Harv.  Univ."  I.  578. 

'  B.  Peirce,  "  Hist.  Harv.  Univ."  7. 


308  HISTORY  OF  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

Academiarum  in  Anglia."  At  Harvard  College,  the  studies 
included  grammar,  rhetoric,  logic,  arithmetic,  geometry, 
physics,  astronomy,  ethics,  politics,  divinity ;  "  exercises  in 
style,  composition,  epitome,  both  in  prose  and  verse;" 
Greek,  Latin,  Hebrew,  Syriac,  and  Chaldee.  No  one  was 
deemed  "  fit  to  be  dignified  with  his  first  degree,"  until  he 
was  "found  able  to  read  the  originals  of  the  Old  and  New 
Testament  into  the  Latin  tongue,  and  to  resolve  them 
logically."1 

This  extraordinary  training  in  the  ancient  languages  led 
to  forms  of  proficiency  that  have  no  parallel  now  in  Amer- 
ican colleges.  So  early  as  1649,  President  Dunster  wrote 
to  Ravius,  the  famous  orientalist,  that  some  of  the  students 
at  Harvard  could  "  with  ease  dexterously  translate  Hebrew 
and  Chaldee  into  Greek."  *  In  1678,  there  was  in  that  col- 
lege even  an  Indian  student  who  wrote  Latin  and  Greek 
poetry;  and  this  accomplishment  continued  to  be  an  ordi- 
nary one  there  as  late  the  Revolutionary  War;  while  the 
facile  use  of  Latin,  whether  for  conversation  or  for  oratory, 
was  so  common  among  the  scholars  of  Harvard  and  of  Yale 
as  to  excite  no  remark.  It  is  a  token  of  the  learning  of 
those  days  that  a  graduate  of  Yale,  of  the  class  of  1746, 
who  rose  to  be  the  president  of  his  college,  delivered  on  a 
certain  Commencement-day  two  elaborate  orations, — one 
being  in  Latin  and  the  other  in  Hebrew.  Finally,  nearly 
all  the  superior  men  in  public  life,  after  the  immigrant 
generation,  were  educated  at  these  little  colleges;  and  in 
all  the  studies  that  then  engaged  the  attention  of  scholars 
in  the  old  world,  these  men,  particularly  if  clergymen,  had 
a  scholarship  that  was,  in  compass  and  variety,  fully  abreast 
of  the  learning  of  the  time. 

The  existence  here  of  these  early  colleges  was  in  many 
ways  a  means  of  colonial  fellowship.  Each  college  was 
itself,  in  all  portions  of  the  country,  a  point  of  distinction 


1  Ibid.  Appendix  7 ;  also  J.  Quincy,  "  Hist.  Harv.  Uniy."  I.  190-191. 
»  J.  B.  Felt,  "  Eccl.  Hist/N.  E."  II.  10. 


S4KLY  AMERICAN  COLLEGES,  ^ 

for  its  own  colony;  at  each  college  were  gathered  some 
students  from  other  colonies;  between  all  the  colleges 
there  grew  a  sense  of  fraternity  in  learning  and  letters, 
and  this  reenforced  the  general  sense  of  fraternity  in  civic 
destinies ;  finally,  at  these  colleges  was  trained  no  little  of 
that  masterly  statesmanship  of  our  later  colonial  time, 
which,  at  a  glance,  interpreted  the  danger  that  hung  upon 
the  horizon  in  1765,  proclaimed  the  imminent  need  of  colo- 
nial union,  and  quickly  brought  it  about. 

But  the  vast  influence  that  our  early  colleges  exerted 
upon  literary  culture,  can  hardly  be  overstated.  Among 
all  the  people,  they  nourished  those  spiritual  conditions 
out  of  which,  alone,  every  wholesome  and  genuine  litera- 
ture must  grow ;  and  in  their  special  devotion  to  classical 
studies,  they  imparted  to  a  considerable  body  of  men  the 
finest  training  for  literary  work,  that  the  world  is  yet  pos- 
sessed of.  It  was  of  incalculable  service  to  American 
literature  that,  even  in  these  wild  regions  of  the  earth,  the 
accents  of  Homer,  of  Thucydides,  of  Cicero,  were  made 
familiar  to  us  from  the  beginning  ;  that  a  consciousness  of 
the  aesthetic  principle  in  verbal  expression  was  kept  alive 
here,  and  developed,  by  constant  and  ardent  study  of  the 
supreme  masters  of  literary  form  ;  and  that  the  great,  im- 
memorial traditions  of  literature  were  borne  hither  across 
the  Atlantic  from  their  ancient  seats,  and  were  here  housed 
in  perpetual  temples,  for  the  rearing  of  which  the  people 
gladly  went  to  great  cost. 

The  worst  disasters  to  which  young  commonwealths  are 
liable,  and  on  which  all  noble  literary  growth  is  the  most 
surely  wrecked,  are  certain  base  spiritual  conditions, — par- 
ticularly, a  loss  of  deference  to  what  is  ancient  and  perma- 
nent, hatred  of  discipline,  impatience  with  slow  and  careful 
work,  and  by  consequence,  vulgarity  of  tone,  superficiality, 
and  barbarism.  Against  these  disasters,  our  early  colleges 
were  in  some  measure  a  barrier,  as  they  were  in  every  re- 
spect a  protest.  They  stood,  in  their  quietness,  year  by 
year,  generation  after  generation,  inculcating  respect  for 


3 10  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  LITER  A  TURE. 

what  is  most  ancient  and  most  permanent,  in  thought, 
in  speech,  in  conduct ;  they  abashed  modern  egotism  by 
the  study  of  sublime  antique  models  of  virtue  and  great- 
ness; they  taught  that  the  worship  of  wisdom  is  nobler 
than  the  worship  of  gold,  that  substance  is  better  than 
show,  that  every  true  man  will  be  simple,  and  modest,  and 
patient,  and  faithful,  and  will  hate  all  shirking  and  all  lies ; 
they  testified  that  even  in  this  world,  in  the  long  run,  the 
sovereign  power  is  the  power  of  simple  rectitude  in  all 
matters  of  state  and  church  and  commerce  and  personal 
behavior ;  they  did  their  best  to  breed  up,  for  the  service 
of  this  new  land,  scholars  of  catholic  learning,  preachers 
who  would  not  part  with  the  ownership  of  their  own  souls, 
and  statesmen  who  would  neither  serve  tyrants  nor  flatter 
mobs.  By  their  nourishment  of  these  pure  and  sound 
spiritual  conditions  of  a  national  life,  and  by  their  steady 
discouragement  of  all  spiritual  conditions  opposite  to 
these,  the  early  American  colleges  stood  for  the  things 
without  which  great  thoughts  and  noble  words  cannot 
come.  And  some  fruitage  from  all  that  brave  work  of 
theirs  was  gathered  sooner,  perhaps,  than  men  expected. 
For  example,  the  tribute  of  most  eloquent  homage,  which, 
in  1775,  in  the  House  of  Lords,  the  Earl  of  Chatham  paid 
to  the  intellectual  force,  the  literary  symmetry,  and  the  de- 
corum of  the  state-papers  then  recently  transmitted  from 
America,  and  then  lying  upon  the  table  of  that  House, 
was  virtually  an  announcement  to  Europe  of  the  astonish- 
ing news, — that,  by  means  of  an  intellectual  cultivation 
formed  in  America,  in  its  own  little  colleges,  on  the  best 
models  of  ancient  and  modern  learning,  America  had  al- 
ready become  not  only  an  integral  part  of  the  civilized 
world,  but  even  a  member  of  the  republic  of  letters. 


V. 

The  study  of  physical  science  in  this  country  began  with 
the  very  settlement  of  the  country.     It  is  not  strange  that 


STUD  y  OF  PH  YSICAL  SCIENCE.  3 1 1 

the  men  who  came  to  the  new  world  should  have  inspected 
it  inquisitively,  either  from  love  of  novelty  or  from  love  of 
gain  ;  and  the  writings  of  the  first  Americans  are  strewn 
with  sharp  observations  on  the  geography  of  America ; 
on  its  minerals,  soils,  waters,  plants,  animals ;  on  its  cli- 
mates, storms,  earthquakes ;  on  its  savage  inhabitants, 
its  diseases,  its  medicines;  and  on  the  phenomena  of 
the  heavens  as  they  appeared  to  this  part  of  the  earth. 
There  were  here,  even  in  our  earliest  age,  several  men  of 
special  scientific  inclination,  such  as  William  Wood,  John 
Josselyn,  John  Sherman,  John  Winthrop  of  Massachusetts, 
and  John  Winthrop  of  Connecticut.  Indeed,  the  latter 
was  recognized  as  an  eminent  physicist  even  among  the 
contemporaneous  physicists  of  England  ;  and  in  Connecti- 
cut, where  he  founded  the  city  of  New  London,  and  where 
he  was  for  many  years  governor,  he  pursued  with  great 
zeal  his  scientific  researches,  carrying  them  even  into  the 
fatal  chase  for  the  philosopher's  stone.1  He  was  on  terms  of 
endearing  intimacy  with  Wilkins,  Robert  Boyle,  and  other 
great  leaders  of  science  in  England;  and  it  is  said  that 
under  the  menace  of  public  calamities  there,  and  drawn, 
likewise,  by  their  friendship  for  Winthrop,  these  men  had 
proposed  to  leave  England,  and  to  establish  in  the  Ameri- 
can colony  over  which  Winthrop  presided  "a  society  for 
promoting  natural  knowledge."  2  They  were,  however,  in- 
duced by  Charles  the  Second  to  remain  in  England  ;  and 
accordingly,  with  the  cooperation  of  Winthrop,  who  hap- 
pened to  be  in  London  at  the  time,  they  founded  there, 
instead  of  in  New  London,  the  association  that  soon  be- 
came renowned  throughout  the  world  as  the  Royal  Soci- 
ety. Of  that  society,  Winthrop  "  was  in  a  particular  man- 
ner invited  to  take  upon  himself  the  charge  of  being  the 
chief  correspondent  in  the  West,  as  Sir  Philiberto  Vernatti 

1  "  The  Winthrop  Papers,"  in  3  Mass.  Hist.  Soc.  Coll.  IX.  226-301 ;  X. 
1-126  ;  also  VI-VII.  of  the  4th  series ;  and  J.  R.  Lowell,  "Among  my 
Books,"  ist  series,  265-273. 

'  John  Eliot,  "  Biograph.  Diet"  505. 


312 


HISTORY  OF  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 


was  in  the  East  Indies ; l  and  as  long  as  he  lived,  he  was  a 
diligent  contributor  to  it  both  of  scientific  specimens  from 
America  and  of  papers  on  science.  Happily,  also,  in  the 
eager  prosecution  of  such  studies,  he  was  succeeded  by 
his  son,  Fitz  John  Winthrop,  who  was  also  a  governor  of 
Connecticut  and  a  Fellow  of  the  Royal  Society. 

The  formation  of  the  Royal  Society  gave  an  impulse 
to  the  study  of  physical  science,  that  was  felt  in  every 
part  of  the  earth,  and  was  especially  felt  in  America.  One 
of  the  first  tokens  of  its  influence  here  was  seen  in  New 
England,  where  the  clergy  and  other  learned  men  turned 
with  uncommon  zest  from  metaphysical  subjects  to  the 
investigation  of  natural  history.  Increase  Mather  formed 
in  Boston  a  society  of  scholars  for  that  purpose  ;  and  his 
writings  show  that  he  was  alert  in  observing  the  world's 
progress  in  physical  science.  John  Williams,  the  minister 
of  Deerfield,  was  a  zealous  student  of  nature,  and  among 
his  writings  are  papers  treating  of  matter,  wind,  fire,  water, 
the  earth,  beasts,  birds,  fishes,  insects,  of  the  method  of 
drawing  a  meridian  line  upon  a  horizontal  plane,  of  Mars, 
Mercury,  Vulcan,  and  so  forth.2  In  1721,  Cotton  Mather 
published  "  The  Christian  Philosopher  ;  a  Collection  of  the 
best  Discoveries  in  Nature,  with  religious  Improvements;" 
in  which  he  explains  the  latest  theories  in  astronomy, 
meteorology,  physics,  zoology,  and  ethnography,  and  shows 
a  large  and  minute  acquaintance  with  these  subjects.  In 
1748,  was  published  "An  Essay  on  Field  Husbandry  ia 
New  England," — one  of  the  earliest  attempts  ever  made 
in  this  country  to  reenforce  by  science  the  empiricism 
of  agriculture.  The  author  was  Jared  Eliot,  a  graduate 
of  Yale  College,  a  preacher,  physician,  naturalist,  and 
farmer ;  a  man  whose  brain,  eye,  and  hand  conspired  to- 
gether through  a  long  life,  for  the  glory  of  God  in  the 
relief  of  man's  estate.  Governor  Joseph  Dudley,  who  died 

1  Dr.  Cromwell  Mortimer,  "Phil.  Trans."  XL.  Dedication. 

*  S.  W.  Williams,  "  A  Biographical  Memoir  "  of  J.  Williams,  131, 


STUD  Y  OF  PH  YSICAL  SCIENCE.  3 1 3 

in  Massachusetts  in  1720,  added  to  his  great  learning  in 
law,  divinity,  and  literature,  a  large  acquaintance  with 
science;  and  his  son,  Paul  Dudley,  who  died  in  1752,  and 
who  resembled  his  father  in  variety  of  learning,  was  spe- 
cially devoted  to  natural  history ;  and  several  papers  of 
his  upon  that  subject  appeared  in  the  "  Philosophical 
Transactions." 

During  the  latter  part  of  the  seventeenth  century,  John 
Banister,  a  correspondent  of  the  English  naturalist,  John 
Ray,  was  settled  in  Virginia,  and  was  eagerly  engaged  in 
the  preparation  of  a  work  on  the  natural  history  of  that 
colony  ;  and,  besides  a  catalogue  of  the  plants  of  Virginia, 
papers  of  his  were  published  on  "  The  Insects  of  Virginia," 
44  Curiosities  in  Virginia,"  "The  Unseen  Lupus,"  and 
"The  Pistolochia,  or  Serpentaria  Virginiana."1  William 
Byrd  of  Westover  made  many  careful  notes  on  the  plants 
and  animals  of  Virginia.  Between  the  years  1710  and 
1726,  Mark  Catesby,  a  friend  of  Sir  Hans  Sloane,  pursued 
a  systematic  investigation  of  natural  objects  in  Virginia, 
the  Carolinas,  Georgia,  and  even  in  Florida  and  the  Ba- 
hama islands,  and  afterward  published  a  large  work  upon 
that  subject.  John  Clayton,  a  physician  and  botanist,  who 
lived  in  Virginia  from  1706  to  1773,  was  a  tireless  student 
of  the  plants  of  that  region,  greatly  enlarged  the  botanical 
catalogue,  corresponded  with  Linnaeus  and  Gronovius, 
and  contributed  many  papers  to  the  "  Philosophical  Trans- 
actions." During  the  larger  part  of  the  same  period,  John 
Mitchell,  likewise  a  physician  and  a  Fellow  of  the  Royal 
Society,  pursued  in  Virginia  the  study  of  botany,  publish- 
ing  a  treatise  on  the  subject,  and  sending  abroad  to  learned 
men  and  learned  societies  many  botanical  specimens  and 
many  scientific  papers. 

Perhaps  there  was  no  one  of  these  early  American  stu- 
dents of  nature  whom  it  is  now  pleasanter  to  recall  than 

«  F.  S.  Drake,  "  Diet  Am.  Biog."  59 ;  «1*>.  E.  Tnckennan,  in  -  New  Eng- 
land'* Rarities."  Introd.  15. 


314  HISTORY  OF  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

the  Quaker  naturalist,  John  Bartram.  Born  in  Pennsyl- 
vania, in  1701,  and  left  an  orphan  at  thirteen,  he  had  little 
help  from  schools,  and  only  such  leisure  as  he  could  create 
after  his  daily  work  was  done  ;  but  having,  also,  a  sincere 
love  of  nature,  a  thirst  for  all  sorts  of  truth,  and  an  apti- 
tude for  all  sorts  of  mechanic  performance,  he  throve  in 
various  ways.  He  built  with  his  own  hands  a  house,  on 
his  own  grounds  near  Philadelphia,  and  founded  there  the 
first  botanic  garden  in  America.  In  that  garden  he  labored 
every  day,  reared  a  large  family,  made  himself  proficient 
in  medicine  and  surgery,  sent  botanic  specimens  to  the 
gardeners  of  Europe,  wrote  papers  on  botany  for  European 
scientific  societies,  was  appointed  American  botanist  to 
George  the  Third,  and  won  from  Linnaeus  the  praise  of 
being  "  the  greatest  natural  botanist  in  the  world."  '  He 
had  the  naturalist's  passion  for  discovery,  his  friend  Peter 
Collinson  saying  that  he  would  go  fifty  or  a  hundred  miles 
to  see  a  new  plant.  Twice  he  made  long  tours  of  scientific 
exploration,  first  in  1743  through  Pennsylvania  and  New 
York  to  Lake  Ontario,  and  again  in  1765  and  1766  through 
the  Floridas.  Each  of  these  expeditions  resulted  in  a 
book  of  narration  and  description,  having  indeed  no  liter- 
ary merit  besides  simplicity  and  directness  of  statement, 
but  interesting  and  good  as  the  jottings  of  an  eager  nat- 
uralist while  passing  through  a  new  world. 

As  John  Bartram  represents  high  attainments  in  science 
reached  under  all  outward  disadvantages,  so  John  Win- 
throp  of  Harvard  College  represents  still  higher  attain- 
ments in  science  reached  under  all  outward  advantages.  A 
descendant  of  the  first  governor  of  Massachusetts,  and  thus 
belonging  to  a  race  in  which  the  study  of  nature  was  an 
hereditary  passion,  he  was  graduated  at  Harvard  in  1732, 
at  the  age  of  seventeen ;  and  from  1738  until  his  death  in 
1779,  he  served  his  Alma  Mater  with  great  distinction  as 
professor  of  mathematics  and  natural  philosophy.  For 

1  J.  A.  Allibone,  "Dictionary  of  Authors,"  art.  J.  Bartram. 


STUD  Y  OF  PH YSICAL  SCIENCE.  3 1 5 

extent  and  depth  of  learning  in  his  special  departments, 
he  was  probably  the  foremost  American  of  his  day ;  and 
in  other  departments — history,  literature,  theology,  lan- 
guages, politics — he  had  made  great  acquisitions.  During 
his  long  career  at  the  college,  he  was  the  inspirer  of  his 
pupils,  as  well  as  their  guide.  His  aspect  was  very  noble, 
having  in  it  both  dignity  and  tenderness ;  and  those  who 
looked  upon  him  saw  realized  their  highest  conceptions  of 
the  sage  and  the  gentleman.  He  had  an  exquisite  faculty 
of  giving  instruction ;  one  who  was  both  his  pupil  and 
associate  said  of  him  that  "  each  new  lecture  was  a  new 
revelation."  l  His  life  was  given  to  research  and  to  oral 
instruction  rather  than  to  the  writing  of  books;  yet  he 
published  several  small  works,  all  upon  scientific  subjects, 
and  all  occasioned  by  events  that  then  occurred  in  the  earth 
or  the  heavens — earthquakes,  comets,  meteors,  and  the 
transits  of  Venus.  These  writings  are  models  of  scientific 
exposition, — thorough,  simple,  terse,  lucid,  graceful,  having 
an  occasional  stroke  of  poetic  beauty  in  epithet,  often  ris- 
ing into  an  effortless  and  serene  eloquence.  His  manner 
of  reasoning  is  as  noble  as  his  manner  of  utterance ;  mod- 
est, judicial,  never  heedless  or  dictatorial  in  statement, 
never  exaggerating  scientific  conjectures  into  scientific 
facts,  never  insisting  upon  immoderate  inferences  from  his 
scientific  facts.  All  things  considered,  he  was  probably 
the  most  symmetrical  example  both  of  scientific  and  of 
literary  culture  produced  in  America  during  the  colonial 
time  ;  representing  what  was  highest  and  broadest  in  it, 
what  was  most  robust  and  most  delicate ;  a  thinker  and  a 
writer  born  and  bred  in  a  province,  but  neither  in  thought 
nor  in  speech  provincial ;  an  American  student  of  nature 
and  of  human  nature,  who  stayed  at  home,  and  bringing 
Europe  and  the  universe  to  his  own  door,  made  himself 
cosmopolitan. 

Thus,  from  the  earliest  moment  of  American  civilization, 

1  Professor  Stephen  Sewall,  Funeral  Oration,  4- 

I 


3 1 6  HISTOR  Y  OF  AMERICAN  UTERA  TURE. 

there  were,  here  and  there  in  this  country,  eager  and  keen 
students  of  nature, — their  number  greatly  multiplying  with 
the  passing  of  the  years.  But  it  belongs  to  the  essence  of 
such  studies  that  they  who  pursue  them  should  seek  the 
fellowship  of  their  own  brethren,  either  for  help  in  solving 
difficulties  or  for  delight  in  announcing  discoveries  ;  and  it 
is,  beyond  question,  true,  that  the  union  of  the  American 
colonies  was  first  laid  in  the  friendly  correspondence  and 
intellectual  sympathies  of  students  of  physical  science, 
who  from  an  early  day  were  dispersed  through  these  col- 
onies, and  who,  even  before  commerce,  or  politics,  or  re- 
ligion had  overstepped  the  barriers  between  them,  had 
sought  one  another  out  in  their  scattered  homes,  and  had 
begun  those  generous  interchanges  of  scientific  informa- 
tion, which  were  a  joy  in  themselves,  and  which  led  to 
many  other  beneficent  forms  of  intercolonial  acquaintance. 
By  the  year  1740,  the  American  students  of  nature  had 
become  a  multitude  ;  and  from  that  year  to  the  year  1765, 
the  glory  of  physical  research  among  us  culminated  in  the 
brilliant  achievements  of  Benjamin  Franklin,  whose  good 
fortune  it  then  was  to  enable  his  country  to  step  at  once 
to  the  van  of  scientific  discovery,  and  for  a  few  years  to 
be  the  teacher  of  the  world  on  the  one  topic  of  physical 
inquiry  then  uppermost  in  men's  thoughts.  In  1754,  the 
leading  physicists  of  France — Buffon,  Marty,  Dubourg, 
Fonferri&re,  Dalibard— paused  in  their  studies,  and  sent 
across  the  ocean  this  reverent  word  to  the  great  physicist 
of  America :  "  We  are  all  waiting  with  the  greatest  eager- 
ness to  hear  from  you."  l  Nine  years  before  that,  in  pro- 
posing the  formation  of  "The  American  Philosophical 
Society,"  this  wonderful  man  had  announced  to  his  own 
countrymen  that  the  time  had  come  for  them  to  make 
new  and  greater  exertions  for  the  enlargement  of  human 
knowledge:  "The  first  drudgery  of  settling  new  colo- 
nies .  ,  ,  is  now  pretty  well  over;  and  there  are  many 

>  Works  of  Franklin,  VI.  194. 


COLONIAL  ISOLATION  ENDED.  ,,- 

*n  every  province  in  circumstances  that  set  them  at  ease, 
and  afford  leisure  to  cultivate  the  finer  arts,  and  improve 
the  common  stock  of  knowledge." l  Inspired  by  the  noble 
enthusiasm  of  Franklin,  whose  position  brought  him  into 
large  personal  acquaintance  in  all  the  colonies,  the  activ- 
ity and  the  range  of  scientific  studies  in  America  were 
then  greatly  increased.  Alexander  Garden,  James  Logan, 
Thomas  Bond,  John  Bard,  John  Bartram,  Ebenezer  Kin- 
nersley,  Lewis  Evans,  Thomas  Godfrey,  James  Alexan- 
der, Cadwallader  Golden,  Samuel  Johnson,  Thomas  Clap, 
Jared  Eliot,  Paul  Dudley,  John  Winthrop,  were,  in  those 
years,  with  Franklin,  the  leading  students  of  nature  in  this 
country,  who,  in  colonies  the  most  remote  from  one  an- 
other, were  pushing  forward  similar  researches,  and  who 
found  in  these  researches  a  bond  of  scientific  communion 
that  helped  to  prepare  the  way  for  political  communion — 
whenever  the  hour  for  that  should  come. 

The  direct  impulse  given  by  all  this  eager  study  of 
physical  science  to  the  development  of  American  litera- 
ture is  to  be  seen  not  only  in  scientific  writings  like  those 
of  Winthrop  and  of  Franklin,  which  have  high  and  peculiar 
literary  merit,  but  in  the  general  invigoration  of  American 
thought,  in  the  development  of  a  sturdy  rational  spirit, 
and  in  a  broadening  of  the  field  of  our  intellectual  vision. 


VI. 

In  spite  of  all  these  influences  working  toward  colonial 
fellowship,  the  prevailing  fact  in  American  life,  down  to 
the  year  1765,  was  colonial  isolation.  With  that  year  came 
the  immense  event  that  suddenly  swept  nearly  all  minds 
in  the  several  colonies  into  the  same  great  current  of  ab- 
sorbing thought,  and  that  held  them  there  for  nearly 
twenty  years.  From  the  date  of  that  event,  we  cease  to 
concern  ourselves  with  an  American  literature  in  the  east 

>  Works,  VI.  14- 


318  HISTORY  OF  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

or  the  south,  in  this  colony  or  in  that.  Henceforward 
American  literature  flows  in  one  great,  common  stream, 
and  not  in  petty  rills  of  geographical  discrimination.  Our 
future  studies  will  deal  with  the  literature  of  one  mul- 
titudinous people,  variegated,  indeed,  in  personal  traits, 
but  single  in  its  commanding  ideas  and  in  its  national 
destinies. 


INDEX. 


ADAMS,  John,  his  receit  for  making  I 
inia,  i.  1  10  ; 


a  New  England  in  Virgi 

on  Jonathan  Mayhew.  ii.  199. 

Adams,  John,  the  poet,  ii.  3  ;  his  life, 
54-55  ;  his  Poems  on  Several  Oc- 
casions, 55  ;  his  contribution  to 
Poems  by  Several  Hands,  56. 

Addison,  Joseph,  ii.  123. 

Alexander,  James,  ii.  317. 

Allibone.  J.  Austin,  his  Dictionary  of 
Authors  cited  in  notes,  ii.  236.314. 

Almanac,  its  place  in  literature,  ii. 
120  ;  its  early  prominence  and  char- 
acter in  America,  120-121  ;  Poor 
Richard's,  121-123;  Nathaniel 
Ames's,  122-130. 

Alsop,  George,  i.  3  ;  his  life,  65-66  ; 
his  Character  of  the  Province  of 
Maryland,  65-69  ;  his  description 
of  his  voyage,  68. 

American  Apologetics,  writers  of,   i. 

3,9; 

American  colonies,  order  of  settle- 
ment, i.  6 ;  tendencies  toward  isola- 
tion, ii.  299-301  ;  a  separate  literary 
accent  in  each,  300-301  ;  tendencies 
toward  union,  founded  on  race,  re- 
ligion, commerce,  common  depend- 
ence, common  perils,  301  ;  founded 
on  journalism,  303-306;  on  col- 
leges, 306-310  ;  on  study  of  science, 
310-317  ;  their  union  rapidly  de- 
veloped from  1765,  317-318. 

American  colonists,  traits  of,  in  first 
period,  i.  7,  18,  62.  81-92,  93-114, 
123-125,  129;  in  second  period,  ii. 
205-207,  225-228. 

American  Journal  of  Numismatics, 
cited,  ii.  50  note. 

American  literature,  its  beginning, 
*•  5~!  5  '.  >ts  Founders  immigrant 
authors,  7  ;  England  and  America 
joint  proprietors  of  our  earliest  lit- 
erature, 7  ;  early  American  writings 
classified,  8-1 1 ;  first  group,  news 


sent  back,  8  ;  second  group,  contro- 
versial  appeals,  9  ;  third  group,  Am- 
erican  Apologetics,  9  ;  fourth  group, 
accounts  of  the  Indians,  9-10  ;  fifth 
group,  descriptions  of  nature,  10-11; 
sixth  group,  accounts  of  the  altered 
conditions  of  life  in  the  new  world, 
ii  ;  seventh  group,  books  written 
with  special  reference  to  Americans 
themselves,  n  ;  American  literature 
dates  from  our  first  colony,  II  ;  its 
birth-epoch  a  fortunate  one,  12  ; 
changes  in  style,  72-73  ;  during 
first  period  confined  to  two  locali- 
ties, Virginia  and  New  England, 
80  ;  comparative  literary  barrenness 
of  the  former,  and  the  causes,  80-92; 
two  periods  of,  in  colonial  time,  ii. 
5-9  ;  with  second  period  begin 
writers  of  American  birth,  9  ;  range 
of  its  topics  in  New  England  in 
second  period,  93-94  ;  its  early  con- 
dition in  New  York,  207  ;  in  Penn- 
sylvania, 227-228  ;  its  isolated 
character  in  colonial  times,  299  ;  its 
separate  character  in  each  colony, 
300-301  ;  its  development  toward 
uniformity  dependent  on  colonial 
union,  301-302,  317-318;  stimu- 
lated by  journalism,  304-306;  by 
early  colleges,  309-310;  by  study 
of  physical  science,  317. 

Americans,  a  new  race,  ii.  6-7. 

Ames,  Nathaniel,  ii.  3  ;  his  Almanac, 
122-130. 

Andros  Tracts,  ii.  162  note. 

Archaeologia     Americana,     cited,   in 
notes,  i.  41,  154,  156,  157  ;  "•  79- 

Aristotle,  denounced  by  Cotton  Ma- 
ther, ii.  86-87. 

Armstrong,    Edward,    his   edition   of 
Leeds's  News,  etc.,  209  note. 

Arnold,    Thomas,   on   the   Fantastic 
writers,  i.  283  note. 

Aspinwall  Papers,  cited,  i.  82  nota. 

3  IP 


320 


INDEX. 


Bacon,  Francis,  i.  6,  20,  228  ;  ii.  122, 
129. 

Bacon,  Nathaniel,  his  rebellion,  i. 
69-72,  80 ;  ii.  6,  259  note,  264  ; 
anonymous  papers  concerning  his 
rebellion,  i.  72-80;  poem  on  his 
death,  78-79. 

Ballads,  early  American,  ii.  52. 

Baltimore,  Lord,  founds  Maryland,  i. 
60  ;  Alsop's  book  dedicated  to,  68. 

Bancroft,  George,  cited,  in  notes,  i.  41, 
94  ;  his  description  of  Virginia,  83, 
85  ;  on  early  religious  intolerance 
in  Virginia,  91  note. 

Banister,  John,  ii.  3  ;  as  a  student  of 
science,  313. 

Bard,  John,  ii.  317. 

Barnard,  John,  ii.  2,  88,  134  note  ;  his 
life  and  traits,  175-176  ;  his  ser- 
mons, 176-177. 

Barnes,  Albert,  ii.  242  note. 

Bartram,  John,  ii.  3,  317  ;  his  life,  314  ; 
as  a  student  of  science,  314. 

Bay  Psalm  Book,  its  origin  and  pecu- 
liarities, i.  274-277. 

Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  i.  282. 

Belknap  Papers,  cited,  in  notes,  ii.  50, 
194. 

Berkeley,  George,  Bishop  of  Cloyne, 
denunciation  of,  by  William  Doug- 
lass, ii.  156,  157  ;  his  influence  on 
American  thought,  183  note. 

Berkeley,  Sir  William,  his  treatment 
of  Bacon  and  his  followers,  i.  71, 
72,  76  ;  his  opposition  to  schools 
and  printing  in  Virginia,  89  ;  his 
connection  with  the  elder  Beverley, 
ii.  264. 

Bermudas,  described  by  William 
Strachey,  i.  45. 

Beverley,  Robert,  i.  70 ;  ii.  2  ;  his  ar- 
raignment of  the  Virginians,  i.  86, 
87  ;  ii.  266 ;  on  religious  intoler- 
ance in  Virginia,  i.  91  note ;  his 
life,  ii.  264 ;  his  History  of  Vir- 
ginia, 264-267  ;  his  description  of 
the  climate  of  Virginia,  267. 

Bigelow,  John,  his  life  of  Franklin, 
etc.,  cited,  in  notes,  ii.  237,  239, 
245,  253- 

Blackmore,  Sir  Richard,  ii.  44. 

Blair,  James,  ii.  2  ;  his  life,  260  ; 
founds  William  and  Mary  College, 
260-261 ;  his  Present  State  of  Vir- 
ginia, 261-262  ;  his  Sermons,  262- 
263. 

Bond,  Thomas,  ii.  317. 

Boston  News- Letter,  ii.  43  note,  303. 


Boyle,  Robert,  i.  154,  156  ;  ii.  311. 

Bradford,  William,  i.  3,  105,  note; 
126,  his  learning,  99,  118  note; 
his  life,  116;  his  History  of  Plym- 
outh Plantation,  117-122  ;  his  mind 
and  style,  122-126  ;  his  Journal, 
159-163. 

Bradford,  William,  the  printer,  ii. 
209  ;  founds  first  newspaper  in  New 
York,  303-304. 

Bradstreet,  Anne,  i.  3  ;  ii.  12,  25  ;  her 
life  and  writings,  i.  277-292  ;  as  a 
prose- writer,  280-281  ;  as  a  poet, 
277-278,  282-283  ;  her  Four  Ele- 
ments, 283-287 ;  her  Four  Mon- 
archies, 287  ;  her  Contemplations, 
288-290  ;  her  hymns,  290 ;  her  de- 
fence of  women,  291-292 ;  con- 
cluding estimate  of,  292  ;  only  pro- 
fessional poet  in  New  England 
in  first  period,  ii.  9 ;  her  influence 
on  subsequent  writers,  9 ;  John 
Norton's  elegy  on,  9-11 ;  John 
Rogers's  poem  to,  13-15- 

Bradstreet,  Simon,  i.  99,  142  ;  ii.  95  ; 
his  early  life,  i.  279  ;  his  career  in 
New  England,  279. 

Breintnal,  Joseph,  ii.  3  ;  his  part  in 
The  Busy  Body,  239. 

Brewster,  William,  i.  99. 

Brickell,  John,  his  plagiarism  from 
John  Lawson,  ii.  289  note. 

Brodhead,  John  Romeyn,  his  History 
of  New  York,  cited  in  ii.  224,  206 
note. 

Brooke,  Henry,  ii.  3  ;  his  life  and 
writings,  235. 

Browne,  Sir  Thomas,  ii.  101. 

Buckingham,  Joseph  T.,  in  notes, 
ii.  35,  121. 

Bulkley,  Peter,  i.  3,  215,  269  note; 
his  scholarship,  99  ;  his  elegy  on 
Thomas  Hooker,  198  ;  his  life  and 
writings,  216-218  ;  as  a  verse-writer, 
267. 

Budd,  Thomas,  ii.  2  ;  his  Good  Order 
Established,  209. 


Bunyan,  John,  ii.  24. 

k,  John   D.,  on    schools   in   Vir- 


Burl 


ginia,  i.  87  ;  on  early  religious  per- 
secution in  Virginia,  91. 

Burr,  Aaron,  president,  ii.  306. 

Burwell  Papers,  i.  3,  69-80,  72,  72 
note,  79  note. 

Butler,  Samuel,  ii.  123. 

Byles,  Mather,  ii.  2,  3,  43,  50,  88, 
134  note :  his  part  in  Poems  by 
Several  Hands,  55-57  ;  his  rupture 


INDEX. 


321 


with  Hollis  Street  Church,  192-194  ; 
his  versatility  and  wit,  194 ;  his 
traits  as  a  preacher,  194-198. 
Byrd.  William,  ii.  2;  his  life  and 
character,  270-272  ;  his  History  of 
the  Dividing  Line,  272-277  ;  his 
Progress  to  the  Mines,  and  his 
Journey  to  the  Land  of  Eden,  277- 
279  :  his  account  of  John  Lawson's 
death,  289  note;  as  a  student  of 
science,  313. 

Calef,  Robert,  ii.  3;  his  More  Won- 
ders of  the  Invisible  World,  95-96. 

Callcnder.  John,  ii.  2;  his  historical 
discourse  on  Rhode  Island,  150-151. 

Campbell,  Charles,  cited,  in  notes,  i. 
69,  70,  85,  88  ;  ii.  261  ;  his  descrip- 
tion of  early  Virginia  colonists,  i. 
87,  88  ;  on  religious  intolerance  in 
Virginia,  91  ;  his  edition  of  Bever- 
ley,  ii.  264  note. 

Catesby,  Mark,  as  a  student  of  sci- 
ence, ii.  313. 

Chalkley.  Thomas,  ii.  226. 

Chalmers,  George,  in  note,   i.  90. 

Chaplin,  j.,  i.  108  note. 

Chatham,  Lord,  on  American  state- 
papers,  ii.  310. 

Chaucer,  ii.  104,  246. 

Chauncey,  Charles,  of  Harvard  Col- 
lege, i.  3.  215  :  ii.  67  ;  his  scholar- 
ship, i.  99;  his  life,  221-224;  his 
writings,  224-226  ;  fate  of  his  un- 
published writings.  225-226. 

Chauncey,  Charlr*.  of  Boston,  ii.  2, 
88  ;  his  estimate  of  Jeremiah  Dum- 
mer,  116  ;  his  career  and  influence 
before  the  Revolution,  199-200;  his 
hostility  to  religious  enthusiasm, 
200-203. 

Chauncey  Memorials,  cited,  in  notes, 
i.  222  ;  ii.  200,  201. 

Church,  Benjamin,  ii.  2  ;  his  life,  140; 
his  History  of  Indian  Wars,  140-14 1. 

Clap.  Roger,  i.  95  note. 

Clap.  Thomas,  ii.  3.  317. 

Clarendon,  Lord,  his  History  of  the 
Rebellion  denounced  by  Cotton 
Mather,  ii.  86. 

Clayton,  John,  ii.  3  ;  as  a  student  of 
science,  313. 

Clergy  of  New  England,  i.  186-226  ; 
their  supremacy,  186-189;  their 
prolixity.  189-191  ;  their  ability, 
192-193  ;  their  literary  prominence, 
ii.  92-93.  159-160;  their  influence 
divided  with  the  laity,  93~94- 


Cleveland,  John,  i.  282. 

Golden,  Cadwallader,  ii.  2,  3,  317 ; 
his  life,  213  ;  his  History  of  the  Five 
Indian  Nations,  213-215  ;  his  cen- 
sure on  Smith's  History  of  New 
York,  224. 

Colleges  (see  Education). 

Colman,  Benjamin,  ii.  2,  3,  43,  44, 88, 
134  note ;  biography  of,  by  E. 
Turell,  133  ;  on  Solomon  Stoddard, 
169;  his  life  and  character,  171- 
174;  his  Sermons,  174-175. 

Connecticut,  the  order  of  its  coloniza- 
tion, i.  6. 

Cook,  Ebenezer,  ii.  3 ;  his  Sot- Weed 
Factor,  255-259;  his  Sot-Weed 
Redivivus,  259-260. 

Corlet,  Elijah,  i.  198  note. 

Cotton,  John,  i.  3,  142,  180,  193,  194, 
207,  219,  250,  256,  258  ;  ii.  74,121, 
132;  his  scholarship,  i.  99;  his 
elegy  on  Thomas  Hooker,  198  ;  his 
life,  210-214  ;  his  writings,  214- 
215;  his  traits,  215  216;  Thomas 
Carlyle's  estimate  of  him,  213  note  ; 
his  controversy  with  Roger  Wil- 
liams, 249,  254;  as  a  versifier,  267. 

Cotton,  John,  of  Plymouth,  ii.  136 
note. 

Cowley,  Abraham,  i.  283. 

Coxe,  Daniel,  ii.  2  ;  his  Description  of 
Carolana,  215-216  ;  his  plan  of  co- 
lonial onion,  216. 

Crashaw.  Richard,  i.  282. 

Crashaw,  William,  describes  early  op- 
ponents of  American  colonization, 
i.  9 ;  his  references  to  William 
Whitaker,  46,  47. 

Cromwell,  Oliver,  i.  66,  83,  152,  219, 
277  ;  his  letter  to  John  Cotton,  213. 

Cushman,  Robert,  i.  159  note;  his 
complaint  concerning  the  Pilgrims, 
124-125. 

Dana,  Richard  H.,  the  first,  i.  292 

note. 
Dana,  Richard  H..  the  second,  i.  292 

note. 
Danforth,   Samuel,   extract  from  hir 

epitaph,  i.  270. 
Davenport,  John,  his  scholarship,  u 

99- 

Davies,  Sir  John,  i.  182. 
Davies,   Samuel,  ii.  2  ;  his  life,  241  ; 

his  prophetic  allusion  to  Washing. 

ton,  242  ;  as  a  pulpit-orator,  242  ; 

his  sermon  on  the  resurrection,  242- 

244- 


322 


INDEX. 


Dean.  John  Ward,  in  notes,  i.  212, 
228  ;  ii.  24 

Deane,  Charles,  his  edition  of  Smith's 
True  Relation,  i.  20  note,  21  note; 
his  edition  of  Bradford's  Dialogue, 
118  note  ;  ii.  56  note  ;  his  paper  on 
the  Magnalia,  80  note. 

Dt  Foe,  Daniel,  ii.  122,  141. 

Denton,  Daniel,  ii.  2,  209  ;  his  Brief 
Description  of  New  York,  207-209. 

Description  and  Narration,  writers  of, 
i.  3,  lo-n.  30-35,  39-51,  158-185  ; 
ii.  2,  97-99,  138-140,  207-209,215- 
216,  228-230,  268-279,  282-289, 
292-297. 

Dexter,  Henry  Martyn,  his  mono- 
graph on  Roger  Williams,  i.  109 
note  ;  250  note  ;  his  edition  of 
Church's  Indian  Wars,  ii.  140  note. 

Diary,  its  place  in  literature,  ii.  96. 

Dickenson,  Jonathan,  of  Pennsyl- 
vania, ii.  2  ;  his  Protecting  Provi- 
dence, 230. 

Dickinson,  Jonathan,  of  New  Jersey, 
ii.  2  ;  his  life,  216-217  ;  his  skill  as 
a  logician,  217  ;  his  Familiar  Let- 
ters, 217-218. 

Dixon,  W.  Hepworth,  cited,  in  notes, 
ii.  226,  227. 

Donne,  John,  i.  37,  282,  283  note  ;  ii. 

39- 

Douglass,  William,  ii.  2  ;  on  Salem, 
38  ;  his  life  and  character,  151-154  ; 
his  Summary,  154-157. 

Drake,  Francis  S.,  ii.  313  note. 

Drake,  Samuel  G.,  in  notes,  ii.  23,  91  ; 
his  edition  of  Hubbard's  Indian 
Wars,  135  note  ;  his  edition  of 
Prince,  148  note. 

Drayton,  Michael,  i.  182,  287  note; 
his  farewell  ode  to  the  Virginia 
colonists,  14-15  ;  his  exhortation  to 
George  Sandys,  52-53. 

Dryden,  John,  i.  283  ;  ii.  137,  219  ; 
his  estimate  of  Sandys,  i.  58  ;  his 
influence  on  American  verse,  ii.  21, 
39,  43,  123. 

Dudley,  Joseph,  as  a  student  of  sci- 
ence, ii.  312-313. 

Dudley,  Paul,  as  a  student  of  science, 
>i.  313.  317. 

Dudley,  Thomas,  his  learning,  i.  99  ; 
on  toleration,  108  ;  his  trouble  with 
John  Winthrop,  188  ;  as  a  verse- 
maker,  267. 

Dummer,  Jeremiah,  ii.  3,  88,  168 ; 
his  life  and  character,  116-119;  his 
Letter  to  a  Noble  Lord,  119;  his 


Defence  of  the  New  England  Char, 
ters,  119-120. 

Dunster,  Henry,  his  scholarship,  L 
99  ;  his  presidency  of  Harvard  Col- 
lege, 223  ;  on  oriental  studies  at 
Harvard,  ii.  308. 

Dunton,  John,  of  London,  his  ac- 
count of  William  Hubbard,  ii  134; 
of  John  Higginson,  160. 

Duyckinck's  Cyclopaedia  of  Ameri- 
can Literature,  Simons's  edition, 
cited,  in  notes,  ii.  19,  43. 

Dwight,  Sereno  E.,  his  edition  of 
Works  of  Jonathan  Edwards,  cited, 
in  notes,  ii.  179,  180,  181,  182,  185, 
186,  187,  188,  189,  190,  191,  192. 

Dwight,  Theodore,  ii.  97  note. 

Education  in  Virginia  in  seventeenth 
century,  i.  87-90  ;  in  New  England 
during  same  period,  98-100 ;  in 
New  York,  ii.  207  ;  in  Pennsyl- 
vania, 227,  234  ;  rise  of  Colleges, 
306-310. 

Edwards,  Jonathan,  i.  207  ;  ii.  2.  74, 
217,241;  his  life,  177-178  ;  his  pre- 
cocity, 178-185  ;  his  studies  in  phys- 
ical science,  185-186  ;  his  habits  as 
a  student,  186—188 ;  his  sorrows, 
187  ;  his  power  as  a  preacher,  188- 
191  ;  his  Sinners  in  the  Hands  of  an 
Angry  God,  189-191  ;  concluding 
estimate  of,  191-192  ;  describes  en- 
trance examinations  at  Yale,  307. 

Eliot,  Jared,  ii.  3  ;  as  a  student  of 
science,  312,  317. 

Eliot,  John,  i.  153,  154,  245;  his 
scholarship,  99  :  his  part  in  the  Bay 
Psalm  Book,  275. 

Eliot,  John,  of  Boston,  cited,  in  notes, 
i.  187  ;  ii.  66,  134.  3"- 

Ellis,  Alexander  ].,  his  Karly  English 
Pronunciation,  cited,  ii.  300  note. 

Ellis,  John  Harvard,  his  edition  of 
Anne  Bradstreet's  works,  i.  278 
ii.n,  15,  notes. 

Endicott,  John,  i.  105,  109,  141,  142, 
145. 

English  Language,  as  modified  in 
America,  ii.  299-300. 

Evans,  Lewis,  ii.  2,  307  ;  his  Analysis 
of  the  Middle  Colonies,  240-241. 

Fantastic  writers,  i.  282-283  ;  ii.  39« 
87-89. 

Felt,  J.  B.,  cited,  ii.  308  note. 

Fisher,  Joshua  F.,  cited,  in  notes,  ii. 
232,235. 

Fleet,  Henry,  his  Journal,  i.  60  notft 


INDEX. 


323 


Folger.  Peter,  ii.  3.  21 ;  his  Looking. 
Glass  for  the  Times,  19-21  ;  Frank- 
lin's reference  to,  21. 

Fontaine,  James,  cited,  ii.  265  note. 

Force,  Peter,  his  Historical  Tracts, 
cited  in  notes,  i.  42,  60,  61,  80,  85, 
87- 

Ford.  John,  i.  282. 

Frame.  Richard,  ii.  2  ;  his  Short  De- 
scription of  Pennsylvania,  230. 

Franklin.  Benjamin,  ii.  3.  74,  216,  227, 
334.  235.  236.  244.  245.  3'7  !  his 
father's  family,  i.  95  note  ;  his  refer- 
ence to  Peter  Folger.  it  21  ;  his 
tribute  to  Cotton  Mather's  Bonifa- 
cius.  84  ;  his  Poor  Richard's  Alma- 
nac, 121-123;  on  Breintnal.  213  ;  his 
literary  and  scientific  eminence 
prior  to  1765.  251-253  ;  apprecia- 
tion of,  by  Hume.  251  ;  by  French 
savans,  251,  316  ;  on  American  pro- 
vincialisms. 300  ;  founds  first  maga- 
zine in  America,  305. 

Franklin.  James,  hi-.  Almanac,  ii. 
122 ;  founds  the  New  England 
Coarant.  303. 

Fraser.  Professor  A.  C.,  his  edition  of 
Works  of  Bishop  Berkeley.  183  note. 

Fuller,  Thomas,  his  estimate  of  Capt. 
John  Smith,  i.  36 ;  of  Sandys's 
Ovid,  58. 

Furman.  Gabriel,  his  edition  of  Den- 
ton's  Brief  Description,  ii.  207  note. 

Garden.  Alexander,  the  clergyman, 
ii.  2 ;  his  life  and  character,  289- 
890  ;  hi%  sermons.  290  ;  his  hostili- 
ty to  Whitefield.  290-291. 

Garden.  Alexander,  the  physician,  ii. 
3-  283.  317. 

Gardener.  Lion,  i    151  note. 

Gee.  Joshua,  cited,  ii.  79  note. 

Georgia,  colonization  of.  i.  6  note  ;  its 
part  in  colonial  literature,  ii.  292- 
297. 

Godfrey.  Thomas,  the  mathematician, 
ii.  244-245.  317. 

Godfrey.  Thomas,  the  poet,  ii.  3 ; 
his  life.  245  :  his  Juvenile  Poems, 
245-246;  his  Prince  of  Parthia, 
246-251. 

Gookin.  Daniel.  \.  3 ;  his  learning, 
99  ;  his  life  and  character,  151-154; 
his  Historical  Collections  of  the  In- 
dians in  New  England.  155-156; 
his  Account  of  the  Christian  Indians 
in  New  England,  156-157  ;  his  His- 
tory of  New  England.  157. 


Gorton,  Samuel,  i.  104,  127,  128. 
Gosnold,  Bartholomew,  i.  18,  37. 
Grahame,  James,  his  History  01 

United  States,  cited,  ii.  226  note. 
Green,  John  Richard,  i.  82  note. 
Green,  Joseph,  ii.  3  ;  his  life,  48  ;  hi» 

facetiousness,  48  ;    his  impromptu 

verses,  48-50 ;   his   Entertainment 

for  a  Winter  Evening,  and   other 

satires,  50-51. 
Gridley,   Jeremiah,    edits    American 

Magazine,  ii.  305. 
Griswold,  Rufus  W.,  his   Poets   ana 

Poetry  of  America,  cited,  in  notes, 

ii.  52,  235,  240. 

Hale.  Edward  Everett,  i.  41  note. 

Hammond,  John,  i.  3,  60,  65;  his 
Leah  and  Rachel,  61-65. 

Harris,  Thaddeus  Mason,  ii.  135  note. 

1 1  art lil>,  Samuel,  ii.  72. 

Harvard  College,  founded,  i.  99-100: 
ii.  307  ;  early  requirements  for  ad- 
mission to,  307  ;  early  course  o\ 
study  in.  308. 

Haven,  Samuel  F.,  ii.  79  note. 

Hawks,  Francis  L.,  i.  46  note. 

Hawthorne,  Nathaniel,  on  our  New 
England  ancestors,  i.  109;  on  early 
New  Kngland,  III. 

Haynes,  John.  i.  99. 

Hen  ing,  \V.  W..  i.  89  note. 

Herbert.  George,  i.  282  ;  ii.  39. 

Herrick.  Robert,  i.  283. 

Higginson,  Francis,  i.  3;  ii.  160 ;  hi> 
life.  166-167 ;  his  True  Relation 
and  his  New  England's  Plantation, 
167-170. 

Higginson,  John,  i.  194.  207;  ii.  2, 
38 ;  lines  on,  by  Nicholas  Noyes, 
41  ;  his  life  and  writings,  160-161. 

Higginson, Thomas  Wentworth, cited, 
in  notes,  i.  170,  189. 

Hildreth,  Richard,  i.  94  note  ;  ii.  216 
note  ;  on  early  religious  intolerance 
in  Virginia,  i.  91  note ;  on  educa- 
tion in  early  New  England,  99. 

Historical  Magazine,  ii.  239  note. 

Historical  writers,  i.  3;  69-80;  115- 
157;  ii.  2.  I3I-I57-  213-215,223- 
225,  264-267,  279-282. 

Holme,  John,  his  True  Relation  01 
Pennsylvania,  ii.  230. 

Holmes.' Oliver  Wendell,  i.  292  note. 

Hooke,  William,  i.  3.  "5  :  his  life 
and  writings,  2IO-22I ;  his  graphic 
de-cription  of  a  battle  scene,  22 1. 

Hooker,  E.  W.,  in  notes,  i.  198.  201. 


324 


INDEX. 


Hooker,  Thomas,  i.  3,  142,  190,  207, 
215,  269  ;  his  scholarship,  99  ;  his 
life  and  character,  193-198  ;  his 
writings,  198-204  ;  on  Richard 
Mather,  ii.  65. 

Hopkins  Edward,  extract  from  his 
epitapn.  i.  270. 

Hopkins   Stephen,  i.  142. 

Howison  R.  R.,  on  early  religious 
intolerance  in  Virginia,  i.  91  note. 

Hubbard.  William,  i.  213  note,  216 
note  ;  ii.  2,  22,  23  note,  132  ;  on 
Preside-t  Dunster,  i.  223  note  ;  his 
life  and  character,  ii.  133-135  ;  his 
General  History  of  New  England, 
135  ;  his  Indian  Wars,  135-138. 

Hudson,  Frederic,  his  Journalism  in 
the  United  States,  cited,  ii.  303 
note. 

Hume,  David,  his  appreciation  of 
Franklin,  ii.  251. 

Hutchinson,  Anne,  i.  142. 

Hutchinson,  Thomas,  i.  117;  ii.  132; 
in  notes,  i.  94,  106,  188 ;  ii.  91, 
118  ;  on  William  Hubbard,i33-i34- 

Indians,  the  subject  of  a  large  class  of 
early  American  writings,  i.  9-10 ; 
desertions  of,  32,  33,  34,  161-163, 
164,  170,  177-179;  Whitaker's  ap- 
peal in  behalf  of,  i.  47-48  ;  massa- 
cres by,  53,  70  ;  wars  with,  i.  73-77, 
144,  147-151,  151  note,  153,  156- 
157,  245  ;  ii.  135-144  ;  Morrell's 
appeal  in  behalf  of,  i.  273;  de- 
scribed by  John  Lawson,  ii.  286-288. 

Intolerance  (see  Religious  Persecu- 
tions). 

Irving,  Washington,  ii.  266. 

Jamestown,  i.  17,  27,  53.  85. 
Jefferson,   Thomas,  ii.  116;  on  early 

religious  intolerance  in  Virginia,  i. 

91   note;    his   criticism   on   Stith's 

style,  ii.  280. 
Johnson,  Edward,  i.  3,  187  note  ;  his 

life,     137  ;     his    Wonder- Working 

Providence,  137-146  ;  as  a  versifier, 

145- 
Johnson,  Samuel,  of  Stratford,  ii.  3, 

3I7- 

Jones,  Hugh,  ii.  2  ;  his  career  in  Vir- 
ginia, 268 ;  his  Present  State  of 

Virginia,  269-270. 
Jonson,     Ben,    i.    20,    35,    78,    182, 

282. 
Josselyn,  John,  i.  3 ;  ii.  311  ;  his  life, 

i.    180-182 ;    his    New    England's 


Rarities,  and  his  Two  Voyages  to 
New  England,  182-185  :  his  ere- 
dulity  illustrated,  183-185. 
Journalism  in  America,  first  attempts 
in,  ii.  93,  303-306  ;  its  influence  on 
colonial  union,  304  ;  on  literature, 
304-306. 

Kalm,  Peter,  on  colonial  isolation,  ii. 

299. 

Keimer,  Samuel,  ii.  235,  236. 
Kettell,    Samuel,   his   Specimens    of 

American  Poetry,  cited,  in  notes,  ii. 

21,  49,  50,  52. 
King  Philip's  War,  i.  147,   153,    156- 

157  ;  ii.  6,  19,  136-138,  140-141. 
King's  College,  founded,  ii.  307. 
Kinnersley,  Ebenezer,  ii.  317. 
Knapp,  Francis,  his  life,  ii.  43  ;  a  dis- 
ciple of  Pope,  43. 
Knapp,  Samuel  L.,  cited,  in  notes,  ii. 

43,  50. 
Knight,    Sarah    Kemble,   ii.    2 ;    her 

Journal,  97-99. 
Knowles,  J.  D.,  cited,  i.  245  note. 

Laud,  William,  his  persecutions  of  the 
Puritans,  i.  193,  204,  205-206,  211, 
212,  223,  227. 

Lawson,  John,  ii.  2  ;  his  coming  to 
America,  282  ;  his  description  of 
Charleston  and  the  South  Carolin- 
ians, 282-283  ;  his  History  of  North 
Carolina,  283-289  ;  his  tragic  death, 
289. 

Lechford,  Thomas,  his  Plain.  Dealing, 
i.  190  note. 

Lee,  Eliza  B.,  i.  292  note. 

Leeds,  Daniel,  ii.  3  ;  his  News  of  a 
Trumpet,  etc.,  209. 

Leeds,  Josiah  W.,  his  History  of  the 
United  States,  ii.  226  note. 

Literary  Periods,  two  in  our  colonial 
time,  ii.  5-9. 

Livingston,  William,  ii.  3,  306  ;  his 
life,  218  ;  his  character,  220;  his 
Philosophic  Solitude,  218-220  ;  his 
travestyon  the  Thirty-Nine  Articles, 
221-222  ;  his  Review  of  Military 
Operations  in  America,  222 ;  his 
poem  to  Eliza,  222-223. 

Locke,  John,  i.  135  ;  ii.  178,  219. 

Logan,  James,  ii.  3  233,  235,  317 ;  his 
life,  231-232  ;  his  scholarship,  232; 
his  writings,  232-233. 

Longfellow.  Henry  Wadsworth.i.  108 
note,  112,  182,  212  note,  219. 

Lowell,  James  Ru*sell,  in   notes,  i.  8 


INDEX. 


325 


94  ;    ii.    311  ;    on    Wigglesworth's 
Day  of  Doom,  34-35- 
Lyford,  John,  satirical  description  of, 
i.  123- 

Magazines,  early  examples  of  in  Amer- 
ica, ii.  305-306. 

Marston.  John,  i.  13  note. 

Maryland,  the  order  of  its  coloniza- 
tion, i.  6  ;  founded  by  Lord  Balti- 
more, 60 ;  its  earliest  literature 
blended  with  Virginia's,  60 ;  John 
Hammond's  defence  of,  61-64  ; 
George  Alsop's  Character  of.  65-69  ; 
its  part  in  later  colonial  literature. 
ii.  255-260. 

Mason,  Captain  John,  i.  3  ;  ii.  140 ; 
his  history  of  Pequot  War,  i.  148- 
151. 

Massachusetts  Bay,  i.  129,  246  ;  the 
order  of  its  colonization,  6 ;  its  con- 
servative character,  93. 

Massachusetts  Historical  Society  Col- 
lections, cited,  in  notes,  i.  50.  72,  79, 
82.  106,  117.  148,  151,  155,  170, 
180.  185.  187.  272  ;  ii.  45.  50.  94. 
95.  135.  143.  148,  194,  280.  311. 

Massachusetts  Historical  Society  Pro- 
ceedings, cited,  in  notes,  i.  79 ;  ii. 
25.  80.  loo.  103. 

Ma&singer.  Philip,  i.  282. 

Mather,  Cotton,  ii.  2,  12,  22,  39, 
40,  104,  106.  132;  in  notes,  i.  94, 
95,  loo,  104.  105,  108.  187,  195. 
196,  197,  198,  212,  213.  214,  216, 
217,  221.  223.  224.  270.  271.  275  ; 
ii.  65,  66.  67,  70.  79,  96 ;  on 
Michael  Wigglesworth,  24  ;  his  pre- 
eminence among  the  Mathers,  73  ; 
a  victim  of  adulation,  74  ;  his  in- 
tellectual endowments,  74-75  :  his 
moral  affectations.  75-76  ;  his  ascet- 
icism, 76-77  ;  his  industry  and  at- 
tainments. 78-79  ;  the  multitude  of 
his  writings,  79-80  ;  his  Magnalia, 
80-84  ;  his  anxieties  respecting  its 
publication,  81-82  ;  its  scope,  82  ; 
his  qualifications  for  writing  it,  82- 
83  ;  estimate  of  its  historical  char- 
acter. 83-84  ;  his  Bonifacius,  84 ; 
hi-  Psalterium  Americanum.  84  ; 
his  Manuductio  ad  Ministerium, 
84-87  ;  its  advice  on  study  of  He- 
brew. 85  ;  of  history.  85-86 ;  of 
natural  philosophy,  86  ;  its  assault 
on  Aristotle.  86-87 ;  his  place  in 
American  literature,  87-88 ;  his 
Fantastic  style,  88;  bis  style  not 


agreeable  to  his  later  contempo 
raries,  88-89  '•  n>s  theory  of  style, 
89-90  ;  his  biography,  by  Samuel 
Mather,  133  ;  his  reference  to  Urian 
Oakes,  163,  164;  as  a  student  of 
science,  312. 

Mather,  Increase,  ii.  2,  104,  106,  117, 
132,  167  ;  in  notes,  i.  148  ;  ii.  91  ; 
on  Urian  Oakes,  16  ;  his  life,  67- 
69;  his  learning,  69  ;  as  a  student, 
69-70  ;  as  a  pulpit-orator,  70  ;  his 
writings,  70-73  ;  their  literary  merit, 
70  ;  his  Illustrious  Providences,  72— 
73  ;  as  a  student  of  science,  312. 

Mather.  Richard,  ii.  67,  132;  his 
scholarship,  i.  99  ;  his  part  in  the 
Bay  Psalm  Book.  275  ;  his  life,  ii. 
64-66  ;  traits  of  the  Mather  family, 
66 ;  his  writings,  66  ;  as  a  student, 
66-67  ;  his  epitaph,  73. 

Mather,  Samuel,  ii.  2  ;  his  biography 
of  Cotton  Mather,  cited,  in  notes, 
75.  7°.  77.  78.  79.  89 ;  its  faults, 
133  ;  his  life  and  writings,  90-91. 

May.  Samuel  J.,  his  account  of  Mather 
Byles  in  Hollis  Street  Church,  ii. 
193. 

Mayer,  Brantz,  his  edition  of  the  Sot- 
Weed  Factor,  ii.  259  note. 

Mayhew,  Jonathan,  ii.  2, 88, 134  note  ; 
his  great  political  and  religious  in- 
fluence, 199. 

Maylem,  John,  ii.  3  ;  his  life,  54 note; 
his  Conquest  of  Louisburg,  53 ;  his 
Gallic  Perfidy,  53-54. 

McClure,  A.  W.,  cited  i.  214  note. 

Milton,  John,  i.  21,  146,  243,  295 
note,  266,  283  note  ;  ii.  56,  72, 
123,  211,  219  ;  quoted,  i.  101  ;  his 
views  on  toleration  less  liberal  than 
those  of  Roger  Williams.  251-252. 

Miscellaneous  prose-writers,  i.  3.  227- 
263  ;  ii.  3,  92-130,  212,  218-223. 

Mitchell,  John,  ii.  3 ;  as  a  student  of 
science,  313. 

Mitchell,  Jonathan,  his  epitaph,!.  270; 
ii.  67. 

Montagu,  Lady  Mary,  on  prevalence 
of  verse-making  in  ner  time,  i.  267. 

Morley,  Henry,  on  Fantastic  Writers, 
i.  283  note. 

Morrell.  William,  i.  3;  his  life,  271- 
272  ;  his  Nova  Anglia,  272-274. 

Morris.  Lewis,  ii.  3  :  his  life,  210- 
2ii  ;  his  writings,  211-212. 

Morton.  Nathaniel,  i.  3,  117  I  in  notes, 
105,  198.  213.  269.  270  ;  his  life,  i. 
126  ;  his  New  England's  Memorial. 


326 


INDEX. 


126-128;  his  lack  of  originality, 
127-128  ;  on  death  of  John  Cotton, 
214 ;  Hubbard's  indebtedness  to 
New  England's  Memorial,  ii.  135. 

Mourt's  Relation,  i.  159  note. 

Murphy,  Henry  C.,  his  Anthology  of 
New  Netherland,  cited,  ii.  206  note. 

Narragansett  Club  Publications,  cited, 
in  notes,  i.  108,  109,  128,  213,  243, 
245,  246,  247,  249,  250,  251,  252, 
253,  254,  256.  258,  259,  260,  261, 
262. 

Narration,  writers  of  (see  Descrip- 
tion). 

Neill,  Edward  D.,  his  History  of  the 
Virginia  Company  of  London,  cited, 
in  notes,  i.  13,  17  ;  his  Founders  of 
Maryland,  cited,  60  note  ;  his  Notes 
on  the  Virginia  Colonial  Clergy, 
cited,  ii.  260  note. 

New  England,  contrasted  with  Vir- 
ginia, i.  83-85  ;  its  colonization, 
93-94- 

New-Englanders,  character  of  early,  i. 
94-114,  123-125,129;  their  large 
families,  94-^95  ;  a  race  of  thinkers, 
96-98  ;  their  esteem  for  learning, 
98-100  ;  their  earnestness  and  faith 
in  prayer,  100-104;  their  asceti- 
cism, 104-106;  their  severity  and  in- 
tolerance, 106-109  ;  their  literary 
environment,  109-114;  their  faith 
in  Providence.  143-144  ;  their  atti- 
tude toward  poetry  and  art,  264- 
268. 

New-England  Historical  and  Geneal- 
ogical Register,  cited,  in  notes,  ii. 
15-  33,  95,  291. 

New  Hampshire,  order  of  its  coloniza- 
tion, i.  6. 

New  Hampshire  Historical  Society 
Collections,  cited,  ii.  141  note. 

New  Jersey,  order  of  its  colonization, 
i.  6  ;  its  part  in  colonial  literature, 
ii.  205-225. 

New  Jersey,  College  of,  founded,  ii. 
307- 

New  York,  order  of  its  colonization, 
i.  6 ;  its  characteristics  under  Dutch 
rule,  ii.  205-206  ;  under  English 
rule,  206-207  ;  its  part  in  colonial 
literature,  205-225. 

New  York  Historical  Society  Collec- 
tions, cited,  ii.  224  note. 

Nichol,  Professor  John,  on  the  Bay 
Psalm  Book.  i.  276. 

Niles.  Samuel,  ii.  2 ;   his  History  of 


the  Indian  and  French  Wars,  143- 
144. 

North  Carolina,  order  of  its  coloniza- 
tion, i.  6  ;  sarcasms  on,  by  William 
Byrd,  ii.  274-276  ;  its  part  in  colo- 
nial literature,  282-289 ;  described 
by  John  Lawson,  283-285. 

Norton,  John,  of  Boston,  i.  3  ;  his 
scholarship,  99  ;  on  toleration,  108  ; 
his  life  and  writings,  218-219. 

Norton,  John,  of  Hingham,  i.  292 
note  ;  ii.  3,  12 ;  his  life,  9 ;  his 
elegy  on  Anne  Bradstreet,  9-11. 

Noyes,  Nicholas,  ii.  3,  43  ;  his  life  and 
character,  38-39  ;  the  greatest  of 
our  Fantastic  poets,  39,  40,  87  ;  his 
prefatory  poem  on  the  Magnalia, 
39-40;  his  lines  on  John  Higgin- 
son,  41  ;  on  Joseph  Green,  41  ;  on 
the  malady  of  James  Brayley,  42-43. 

Oakes,  Urian,  ii.  2,  3,  134  note ;  his 
life  and  character,  15-16  ;  his  high 
literary  capacity,  16  ;  his  elegy  on 
Thomas  Shepard,  16-18  ;  as  a  prose- 
writer,  163-164;  his  sermons,  164- 
167. 

Oglethorpe,  General  James,  Tailfer's 
denunciation  of,  ii.  292-297. 

Oldmixon,  John,  blunders  in  his 
British  Empire  in  America,  ii.  264. 

Oliver,  Peter,  ii.  3 ;  his  life,  57  ;  his 
poem  on  Josiah  Willard,  57. 

Osborn,  John,  ii.  3  ;  his  life  and  writ- 
ings, 52  note. 

Palfrey,  John  Gorham,  cited,  i.  95 
note. 

Parton,  James,  his  Life  of  Franklin 
cited,  ii.  122  note. 

Peabody,  A.  P.,  ii.  24  note. 

Peabody,  W.  B.  O.,  ii.  76  note. 

Peirce,  Benjamin,  his  History  of  Har- 
vard University  cited,  in  notes,  ii. 
307,  308. 

Pemberton,  Ebenezer,  on  Samuel 
Willard,  ii.  167. 

Penhallow,  Samuel,  ii.  2,  52  note  ;  his 
life,  141  ;  his  History  of  Indian 
Wars,  141-143. 

Penn,  William,  ii.  228,  231,  235  ;  sug- 
gests colonial  union,  216  note  ;  his 
character,  226,  227. 

Pennsylvania,  order  of  its  coloniza- 
tion, i.  6 ;  its  part  in  colonial  lit- 
erature, ii.  227-257;  character  of 
its  founders,  225-228  ;  anonymous 
poem  in  praise  of,  239. 


INDEX. 


327 


Pennsylvania  Historical  Society  Me- 
moirs,  cited,  in  notes,  ii.  227,  230, 
231,  232,  233.  235. 

Pequot  War,  i.  144,  147-151.  245. 

Percy,  George,  i.  3,  18  ;  in  notes,  16, 
1 7.  41  ;  one  of  the  first  settlers  of 
Virginia,  39 ;  his  Discourse  of  Vir 
ginia,  40-4' 

Peters.  Hugh,  i.  145. 

Philadelphia,  College  of,  founded,  ii. 
307. 

Phillips,  Wendell,  i.  292  note. 

Pietas  et  Gratulatio,  ii.  3,  57-63  ;  its 
occasion,  57-58  ;  its  authors,  59 
note. 

Pilgrim  Fathers  (see  Plymouth  Col 
ony). 

Pinkerton,  John,  in  notes,  i.  19, 
82. 

Plymouth  Colony,  i.  246  ;  order  of  its 
colonization,  6  ;  character  of  its 
people.  98.  123-125. 

Poems  by  Several  I  lands,  its  occasion 
and  character,  ii.  55-57. 

Poets  (see  Verse- Writers). 

Pond,  Enoch,  ii.  69  note. 

Poole.  William  Frederick,  his  edition 
of  Johnson's  Wonder  -  Working 
Providence,  cited,  in  notes,  i.  138, 
187. 

Pope.  Alexander,  ii.  236  ;  his  estimate 
of  Sandys's  Ovid,  i.  58;  his  influence 
on  American  poetry,  ii.  39.  43,  55, 
123.  2 1 8,  219,  246. 

Pory,  John,  i.  3.  51.  55  ;  his  life,  char- 
acter, and  writings,  48-51  ;  his 
sketch  of  the  Indians  49-50;  of 
the  country  and  of  pioneer  life  in 
Virginia.  50-51. 

Prince  Society,  i.  170  note. 

Prince,  Thomas,  i.  117.  128;  ii.  2, 
121.  150;  in  notes,  i.  148.  205,277  ; 
ii.  78,  79 ;  on  Cotton  Mather's  style, 
88-89  '•  his  life  and  character,  144- 
145  ;  his  special  fitness  for  historical 
writing.  146 ;  his  Chronological 
History  of  New  England.  145-150  ; 
on  Alexander  Garden.  290. 

Printing,  restrictions  on.  in  Virginia, 
i.  89-90;  in  New  England,  112- 
113;  first  use  of  in  the  colonies, 
275  ;  ii.  120. 

Prior.  Matthew,  ii.  173. 

Proud.  Robert,  his  History  of  Penn- 
>ylvania,  cited,  ii.  226  note. 

Purchas.  Samuel,  i.  37,  40 ;  in  notes, 
16.  17.41.  42- 

Pynchon.  William,  i.  99. 


Quarles.  Francis,  i.  180,  282,  283;  ii. 
39- 

Quincy,  Josiah,  his  History  of  Har- 
vard University,  cited,  in  notes,  i. 
loo,  105  ;  ii.  307,  308. 

Raleigh.  Sir  Walter,  i.  20,  287  ;  ii.  219. 

Ralph,  James,  his  career,  ii.  236. 

Ramsay,  David,  his  History  of  South 
Carolina,  cited,  ii.  200  note. 

Religious  Persecutions,  in  Virginia,  i. 
90-91,  152  ;  in  New  England,  107- 
109.  140-141  ;  Roger  Williams  on, 
250,  252,  253-258,  262. 

Religious  Writers  (see  Theological 
Writers). 

Rhode  Island,  order  of  its  coloniza- 
tion, i.  6  ;  character  of  its  first  in- 
habitants, 98  ;  excluded  from  first 
New  England  Union,  246  ;  Callen- 
dcr's  discourse  on,  ii.  150-151. 

Rhode  Island  College,  founded,  ii. 
307. 

Rhode  Island  Historical  Society  Col- 
lections,  cited,  in  notes,  ii.  150, 
151. 

Rives,  William  C.,  on  early  religious 
intolerance  in  Virginia,  i.  91  note. 

Rogers,  John,  ii.  3,  15;  his  life  and 
character,  12  ;  incident  during  his 
presidency  of  Harvard,  12-13;  his 
poem  to  Anne  Bradstreet,  13-15. 

Rogers,  Nathaniel,  i.  142. 

Rose,  Aquila,  ii.  3  ;  his  Poems  on 
Several  Occasions,  235. 

Rowe,  Elizabeth,  her  friendship  with 
Benjamin  Colman,  ii.  173. 

Rowlandson,  Mary,  ii.  2  :  her  narra- 
tive of  Indian  Captivity,  138-139. 

Rupert,  Prince,  characterized,  by 
Nathaniel  Ward,  i.  229 ;  by  Roger 
Williams,  260. 

Sandys,  George,  i.  3,  59,  60,  182 ;  his 
life  and  character,  51-54;  Dray- 
ton's  exhortation  to  him,  52-53  ;  his 
translation  of  Ovid's  Metamor- 
phoses, 52-58  ;  story  of  Philomela 
and  Procne,  55-57 ;  estimates  of 
him  as  a  versifier,  by  Thomas  Ful- 
ler, Dryden,  and  Pope,  58. 

Savage.  James,  cited,  in  notes,  i.  98, 
103 ;  ii.  83,  134 

Science,  writers  on,  i.  170-185  ;  n. 
183-186,  231-233,  251-253,  310- 
317  ;  its  influence  on  colonial  union, 
316;  on  American  literature,  317. 

ScoU,  John  Morin,  ii.  306. 


328 


INDEX. 


Scottow,  Joshua,  i.  270  note  ;  ii.  3;  his 
Old  Men's  Tears  for  their  own  De- 
clensions, 94  ;  his  Narration  of  the 
Planting  of  Massachusetts,  95. 

Seccomb,  John,  ii.  3  ;  his  life,  46  ;  his 
literary  character,  47;  his  Father 
Abbey's  Will,  46-48. 

Sedgwick,  Theodore,  his  Life  of  Wil- 
liam Livingston,  cited,  in  notes,  ii. 
222,  223. 

Sewall,  Samuel,  ii.  3  ;  his  life  and 
character,  99-100  ;  his  Selling  of 
Joseph,  joo-ioi  ;  his  Description 
of  the  New  Heaven,  101-102  ;  his 
championship  of  women,  102-103  ; 
other  writings,  103  note. 

Sewall,  Professor  Stephen,  his  oration 
on  John  Winthrop  of  Harvard,  cited, 
ii.  315  note. 

Shakespeare,  i.  20,  282  ;  germs  of 
the  Tempest,  41-42. 

Shea,  John  Gilmary,  his  edition  of 
Alsop's  Character  of  Maryland, 
cited,  65  note  ;  his  edition  of  Col- 
den's  History,  cited,  ii.  214  note. 

Shepard,  Thomas,  of  Cambridge,  i. 
3, 142,  193,  215  ;  ii.  his  scholarship, 
i.  99  ;  his  prayer  for  proficiency  in 
note-taking,  104  ;  on  toleration, 
108  ;  his  life  and  writings,  204-210  ; 
his  interview  with  Laud,  205-206  ; 
his  peculiarities,  207  ;  his  theology 
illustrated,  207-210. 

Shepard,  Thomas,  of  Charlestown, 
elegy  on,  by  Urian  Oakes  ii.  16-18, 
163. 

Sherman,  John,  i.  270  note;  ii.  16 
note,  311. 

Shippen,  Joseph,  ii.  3  ;  his  verses,  240. 

Shirley,  James,  i.  282. 

Sibley,  John  Langdon,  his  Harvard 
Graduates,  cited,  in  notes,  i.  190  ; 
ii.  72  ;  his  edition  of  Father  Abbey's 
Will,  cited,  ii.  46  note. 

Sidney,  Algernon,  i.  135. 

Sidney,  Sir  Philip,  i.  20.  88. 

Smith.  Gold  win,  on  the  colony  of 
Pennsylvania,  ii.  225 

Smith,  Captain  John,  i.  3,  54, 82  note, 
182  ;  his  character.  18-20  ;  the  first 
American  writer.  18-19;  as  a  story- 
teller. 19,  36  ;  his  services  in  colo- 
nizing both  Virginia  and  New  Eng- 
land, 19  ;  a  prolific  author.  20  ;  his 
True  Relation,  21-27  '.  his  tour  UP 
the  Chickahominy,  23  ;  his  story  .of 
Pocahontas.  23,  25  ;  his  interviews 
with  Powhatan,  24-25  ;  circum- 


stances under  which  the  book  was 
written,  and  its  style,  26-27  ;  his 
letter  to  his  London  patrons,  27-30  ; 
his  Map  of  Virginia,  30-35  ;  vivid 
pictures  of  the  country,  climate,  and 
productions,  30-32  ;  of  the  Indians, 
32-33  ;  of  his  companions,  33  ;  of 
Powhatan,  33-34  ;  of  the  Susque- 
hannocks,  34  ;  his  return  to  Lon- 
don, and  voyage  to  New  England, 

35  ;      subsequent     career,     35-36  ; 
Thomas    Fuller's   estimate  of  him, 

36  ;  his  defenders  and  eulogists,  36- 
37;  final  estimate,  37-38;  his  his- 
torical veracity  attested  by  William 
Stith,  ii.  279,  280. 

Smith,  Samuel,  ii.  2;  his  History  of 
New  Jersey,  225. 

Smith,  William,  of  New  York,  ii.  2, 
306  ;  on  neglect  of  education  in 
New  York,  207  ;  his  History  of  New 
York,  cited,  in  notes,  210,  211  ;  his 
life  and  writings,  223-225. 

Smith,  William,  of  Pennsylvania,  ii 
2;  his  life,  233  ;  his  General  Idea 
of  the  College  of  Mirania,  233—234; 
as  an  educator,  234  ;  his  Discourses, 
234  note  ;  edits  American  Maga- 
zine, 306. 

South  Carolina,  order  of  its  coloniza- 
tion, i.  6  ;  described  by  John  Law- 
son,  ii.  282-283  ;  its  part  in  colonial 
literature,  289-291. 

Sparks,  Jared,  his  edition  of  Frank- 
lin's Works,  cited,  in  notes,  ii.  232, 
251,  300,  316,  317. 

Spence,  Joseph,  cited,  58  note. 

Spofford,  Ainsworth  R.,  his  Ameri- 
can Almanac,  cited,  ii.  121  note. 

Sprague,  William  B.,  his  Arnals  of 
the  American  Pulpit,  cited,  in  notes, 
i.  198,  220,  222,  269 ;  ii.  66,  72, 
169,  175,  193.  194,  217  ;  his  edition 
of  Davies's  Sermons,  cited,  in  notes, 
242,  244. 

Standish,  Captain  Miles,  i.  148. 

Stedman,  Edmund  Clarence,  cited,  L 
265  note. 

Stith,  William,  ii.  2,  27  note  ;  his  life, 
279  ;  his  History  of  Virginia,  279- 
282  ;  on  James  the  First,  281. 

Stiles,  Ezra,  ii.  116:  his  orations  in 
Latin  and  in  Hebrew,  308. 

Stoddard,  Solomon,  ii.  2  ;  his  life, 
169  ;  his  Answer  to  Some  Cases  of 
Conscience,  169-171. 

Stone,  Samuel,  his  scholarship,  i.  99  ; 
threnody  on,  269. 


INDEX. 


329 


Stoughton,  William,  ii.  2  ;  his  life, 
161-162  ;  his  Narration  of  the  Pro- 
ceedings of  Andros,  162  ;  his  New 
England's  True  Interest,  not  to  Lie, 
162-163. 

Strachey,  William,  i.  3,  51,  54;  his 
voyage  to  Virginia,  41  ;  his  True 
Repertory,  42-45  ;  his  description 
of  a  storm  at  sea,  43-45. 

Sylvester,  Joshua,  i.  282. 

Tailfer,  Patrick,  ii.  2  ;  his  Historical 
Narrative  of  Georgia,  292-297. 

Taine,  H.  A.,  on  Paradise  Lost,  i. 
266  ;  on  the  Fantastic  writers,  283 
note. 

Taylor,  Jacob,  ii.  3  ;  his  life  and  writ- 
ings, 234-235. 

Thacher,  James,  his  American  Medi- 
cal Biography,  cited,  ii.  152  note. 

Theological  and  Religious  Writers,  i. 
3,  186-226;  ii.  2,158-203,216-218, 
233-234.  241-244,  260  263. 

Thomas,  Gabriel,  ii.  2  ;  his  Account 
of  Pennsylvania,  and  of  West  New 
Jersey,  228-229. 

Thomas,  Isaiah,  his  History  of  Print- 
ing  in  America,  cited,  in  notes,  i. 
90,  112,  113,  275  ;  ii.  120,  304,  305, 
306. 

Thompson,  James,  ii.  57,  123. 

Ticknor,  George,  i.  268  note ;  ii.  56 
note. 

Tilden's  Miscellaneous  Poems,  ii.  52- 

Tompson,  Benjamin,  ii.  3,  79  note  ; 
his  life,  21  ;  his  New  England's 
Crisis,  21-22 ;  his  minor  poems, 
28-23. 

Trumbull,  J.  Hammond,  his  edition 
of  Roger  Williams's  Key,  in  notes, 
i.  245,  247. 

Tnckcrman,  Professor  Edward,  L  183, 
184  note  ;  ii.  313  note. 

Tudor,  William,  his  Life  of  James 
Otis,  cited,  ii.  194  note. 

Torell,  Ebenezer,  ii.  2,  44  note ;  his 
Life  of  Benjamin  Colman,  133  ;  his 
Life  of  Jane  Turell,  133  note. 

Turell,  Jane,  ii.  3,  44 ;  as  a  verse- 
writer,  133  note. 

Tyson,  Job  R.,  ii.  227  note. 

Underbill.  Captain  John,  i.  149,  151 
note. 

Vane,  Sir  Henry,  the  younger,  i.  142, 
243- 


Verse- Writers,  i.  3,  51-58,  264-292 ; 
"  3.  5-63,  218-223,  234-240,  244- 
25i,  255-260. 

Vincent,  Philip,  i.  151. 

Virginia,  the  first  of  the  American 
colonies,  i.  5,  6,  17,  93  ;  described 
by  John  Pory,  50 ;  defended  by 
John  Hammond,  61-64  J  rebellion 
in,  69-77  ;  its  literary  barrenness, 
and  the  causes,  80-92  ;  contrasted 
with  New  England,  83-85  ;  its  dis- 
persed social  organization,  84-87  ; 
neglect  of  education,  87-90  ;  re- 
ligious intolerance,  90-91  ;  its  part 
in  later  colonial  literature,  ii.  260- 
282. 

Virginians,  character  of  early,  i.  18, 
62,  81-92  ;  ii.  272-273. 

Walker,  Francis  A.,  on  the  population 
of  early  New  England,  i.  94  note. 

Walton,  Izaak,  i.  171. 

Ward,  Nathaniel,  i.  3,  212  note;  his 
scholarship,  99  ;  on  toleration,  108; 
on  long  sermons,  190  ;  his  life,  227- 
229 ;  his  Simple  Cobbler  of  Aga- 
wam,  229-241  ;  on  Prince  Rupert, 
229 ;  mental  traits  of  Ward,  231- 
232  ;  satire  on  fashionable  women, 
236-237;  his  discussion  of  the 
troubles  in  England,  237-238. 

Washington, George,  on  early  religions 
intolerance  in  Virginia,  i.  91  note  ; 
prophetic  allusions  to,  by  Samuel 
Davies,  ii.  242. 

Waterland,  Daniel,  edits  and  com- 
mends Sermons  of  James  Blair,  ii. 
262. 

Watson,  John  F.,  his  Annals  of  Phila- 
delphia, cited,  in  notes,  ii.  232,  237. 

Watts,  Isaac,  ii.  44,  219. 

Webb,  George,  ii.  3  ;  his  career,  236  ; 
his  Bachelors'  Hall,  237-238. 

Webbe,  John,  ii.  3  ;  his  Discourse  on 
Paper-Money,  ii.  240. 

Webster,  John,  i.  282. 

Welde,  Thomas,  his  part  in  the  Bay 
Psalm  Book,  i.  275. 

Westcott,  Thompson,  his  History  of 
Philadelphia,  cited,  ii.  283  note. 

Wharton,  Thomas  I.,  his  Provincial 
Literature  of  Pennsylvania,  cited,  in 
notes,  ii.  227,  228. 

Whitaker,  Alexander,  i.  3.  55,  80;  his 
life  and  character,  45-46  ;  his  Good 
News  from  Virginia,  47-48. 

White,  Father  Andrew,  his  Relatio 
Itineris  in  Marylandum,  i.  60. 


330 


INDEX. 


Whittier,  John  Greenleaf,  i.  180 ;  his 
Prophecy  of  Samuel  Sewall,  ii.  100, 
102. 

Whitwell,  William,  on  John  Barnard, 
ii.  175. 

Wigglesworth,  Michael,  ii.  3,  35  ;  his 
life  and  character,  23-24;  as  a  poet, 
24-25  ;  his  God's  Controversy  with 
New  England,  25-26  ;  his  Meat  out 
of  the  Eater,  27  ;  his  Day  of  Doom. 
27-35- 

Wigglesworth,  Samuel,  ii.  3  ;  his  life, 
35  ;  his  elegy  on  Nathaniel  Clarke, 
35-38. 

Willard,  Samuel,  ii.  2  ;  his  life,  167  ; 
his  Body  of  Divinity,  167-169. 

William  and  Mary  College,  founded, 
i.  88 ;  ii.  260,  307  ;  Commence- 
ment at  in  1700,  261  ;  its  poverty 
lamented  by  Hugh  Jones,  269. 

Williams,  John,  ii.  2  ;  his  Redeemed 
Captive,  139-140 ;  as  a  student  of 
science,  312. 

Williams,  Roger,  i.  3,  128  ;  his  schol- 
arship, i.  99 ;  his  reference  to  Mor- 
ton's Memorial,  128  note  ;  on  John 
Cotton,  212  ;  his  life  and  character, 
241-246  ;  his  writings,  247-263  ; 
his  Key,  247-248  ;  his  answer  to 
John  Cotton,  249-250;  his  book 
against  a  national  church,  250-252  ; 
his  Bloody  Tenet  of  Persecution, 
253-254  :  Cotton's  reply  and  Wil- 
liams's  rejoinder,  254-258  ;  his  book 
against  George  Fox,  259;  hisletters, 
259-263;  his  celebrated  letter  to  the 
people  of  Providence  on  the  limits 
of  personal  liberty,  261-263. 

Williamson,  H.,  his  History  of  North 
Carolina,  cited,  i.  72  note. 

Wilson,  John,  i.  187,  188  ;  as  a  versi- 
fier, 271. 

Winslow,  Edward,  i.  3,  126,  127 ;  his 
Journal,  159-163;  his  letter  ap- 
pended thereto,  163  ;  his  Good  News 
from  New  England,  164-166;  on 
Roger  Williams,  242. 

Winsor,  Justin,  his  Catalogue  of  the 
Prince  Library,  i.  215  note  ;  ii.  145 
note. 


Winthrop,  Fitz  John,  as  a  student  di 
science,  ii.  312. 

Winthrop,  John,  of  Connecticut,  i. 
102,  128  note,  243,  260 ;  ii.  45 ; 
his  learning,  i.  99  ;  story  concern- 
ing  his  Prayer- Book,  102-103  '<  as  a 
student  of  science,  ii.  311-312. 

Winthrop,  John,  of  Harvard  College, 
"•  3.  31?  !  his  life  and  character, 
314-315  ;  his  eminence  in  science, 
3I5-3I6- 

Winthrop,  John,  of  Massachusetts,  i. 
3,  142,  180,  188,  243;  ii.  311;  in 
notes,  i.  102,  103,  107;  ii.  83;  his 
learning,  i.  99 ;  his  life  and  writ- 
ings, 128-136  ;  his  Model  of  Chris- 
tian Charity,  129-130  ;  his  History 
of  New  England,  130-136;  his  fa- 
mous speech  on  human  liberty,  135- 
136  ;  Hubbard's  indebtedness  to, 
»•  135- 

Winthrop,  Robert  C.,  his  Life  and 
Letters  of  John  Winthrop,  cited,  i. 
135  note. 

Wise,  John,  ii.  3  ;  his  life  and  charac- 
ter, 104-105  ;  his  Churches'  Quar- 
rel Espoused,  106-110;  his  Vindi- 
cation, 110-114  ;  his  style,  114-116, 
134  note. 

Wither,  George,  i.  37,  282,  283;  ii.  39. 

Wolcott.  Roger,  ii.  3 :  his  life  and 
character,  44  ;  his  Connecticut  epic, 
45;  his  Poetical  Meditations,  45-46. 

Wood,  William,  i.  3;  ii.  311  ;  his 
New  England's  Prospect,  i.  170- 
179  ;  his  powers  of  description  il- 
lustrated, 172-175  ;  playful  sketches 
of  the  Indians.  177-179. 

Wynne,  Thomas  H.,  h'is  edition  of 
Byrd  Manuscripts,  ii.  272. 

Yale  College,  founded,  ii.  307  ;  early 
requirements  for  admission  to,  307. 

Yeardly,  Sir  George,  i.  48,  49. 

Young,  Alexander,  his  Chronicles, 
cited,  in  notes,  i.  102,  104,  105,  no, 
159,  160,  161,  162,  163,  164,  165, 
166,  167,  168,  169,  170,  205,  206; 
ii  65,  66,  135. 

Young,  Edward,  ii.  57. 


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